In a popular two-year-old pilot project, 10 Poudre School District schools are diverting trash from the landfill by sending it to a hot composting plant in Platteville.
Four of the schools, Cache La Poudre and Wellington middle schools and Eyestone and Rice elementary schools, are in the North Forty News readership area.
Last year, Eyestone diverted a remarkable 66 percent of its trash from the landfill through its recycling and composting programs. Wellington Middle School diverted 58 percent, followed by CLPMS at 42 percent and Rice at 30 percent.
The overall diversion rate for the 10 schools was 32 percent last year compared to 23 percent the first year of the program, according to PSD’s environmental coordinator John Holcombe.
The district as a whole diverted 688 tons of material from the landfill last year.
The composting project was initiated in 2009 by Gallegos Sanitation, the contracted trash hauler for PSD at that time. The district switched to A-1 Organics out of Platteville this year, the same company that owns the hot composting facility.
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