Growing Sustainability on Campus: Daystar Academy’s Student-Led Composting Program
Sustainable campus development rarely requires large budgets. For the operations department at Daystar Academy, our green journey began with one straightforward question: How could we collaborate with students to build a low-cost composting program using only existing campus resources?
We noticed massive untapped organic waste on campus, including cafeteria food scraps and fallen tree leaves. Instead of continuing to outsource waste disposal, we decided to turn these daily discarded materials into reusable resources and launch our very first composting initiative.
At the beginning, our team had zero composting experience. We randomly mixed dry leaves and food scraps without understanding the critical carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. The unbalanced piles quickly turned overly wet, produced unpleasant odors, and fell into anaerobic decomposition. To avoid repeating these mistakes and achieve year-round composting—especially during cold winters—we conducted extensive online research and finally purchased our first 500L Biolan composting bin.
During the initial three months, our staff ran all trials independently. Lacking mature operational steps, we were unsure how to instruct students properly. We continuously monitored the compost’s temperature and humidity and found our piles consistently stayed below 40°C, which severely slowed decomposition. After countless trials, we discovered a simple yet effective solution: chopping bulky food scraps into small pieces before composting dramatically speeds up material breakdown. Once we established a complete, user-friendly workflow, we started recruiting participants from our school’s Gardening Club.
Our student community started small, with merely three Grade 8 students and one Grade 6 student. Surprisingly, the students quickly became passionate about pre-processing waste. Their favorite activity was chopping daily food scraps inside a large metal bucket with a chopper; this rhythmic, hands-on work was incredibly stress-relieving and became the highlight of their participation. Seeing the program’s potential and students’ active engagement, Daystar Academy approved funding for a second 500L bin. We assigned the first bin for internal testing and trials, while the second one was fully handed over to students for autonomous management.
What impressed our team the most was students’ self-motivation. They willingly devoted their daily noon recess time to managing compost piles, sorting waste and turning materials. As time went by, positive feedback spread across the campus, attracting more students to join voluntarily. Our small group gradually expanded to nearly 25 regular members. To scale up the project further, our student representatives compiled detailed progress reports and presented our program’s achievements to the Daystar Academy Parent Committee. The committee was deeply impressed and generously donated three additional composting bins.
From two initial bins, our program now owns five composting units in total. Over the past two years, our team has persisted rain or shine without pause throughout the entire school year, recycling 14 tons of pre-meal food scraps in total. Currently, 100% of Daystar Academy’s cafeteria kitchen waste is reused for composting. We have also expanded our project to seasonal activities, such as organizing students to collect dry roadside leaves every autumn to supplement carbon-rich compost materials.
Our two-year journey has reached numerous remarkable milestones. The nutrient-dense compost and compost tea we produce have completely replaced commercial fertilizers. To date, Daystar Academy no longer purchases any external fertilizer for campus greening, effectively cutting daily maintenance costs. Beyond environmental benefits, our students actively run booths at local community markets to sell handmade compost and compost tea. This activity helps them learn circular economy concepts and share sustainable values with the public. Moreover, we have been invited by multiple peer schools to share our low-cost, student-driven composting model.
This project has taught us that sustainability grows from simple ideas and consistent teamwork. By utilizing overlooked waste resources and empowering students to take ownership, Daystar Academy has built a self-sufficient ecological loop on campus. Moving forward, we will keep optimizing our composting system and share our experience with more educational communities, allowing sustainable education to take deeper root for all students.
We welcome other schools, educators, and environmental enthusiasts who are interested in our student-led composting initiative to connect with us. Our team is fully willing to share our complete operational strategies, trial-and-error lessons, student management methods and all relevant project experiences. For inquiries and further communication, please feel free to reach out via: dursley.chiu@daystaracademy.cn.
Dursley Chiu
Director of Operations at Daystar Academy
