LAKEWOOD, Ohio — Restaurant kitchens are busy places.
No time to waste.. and here at Lakewood High School, no food goes to waste.
It’s just another way for the Lakewood School District to go green — composting all the food waste that comes out of its cafeterias, food science classes, and the student-run restaurant they’ve been operating for more than a decade.
The Ranger Cafe is open to the public Tuesdays and Wednesdays, giving culinary arts students true hands-on experience.
“They’re learning everything from safety and sanitization to proper knife handling, all the way to cooking methods,” said Chef Devan Corti, culinary arts instructor.. “We’re making our own stocks, soups, and sauces.”
And for Corti, teaching the students to be environmentally aware is a logical next step.
They started recently by transitioning all of their takeout containers to compostable ones.
Then, students began saving all of the food waste into buckets — everything from eggshells and chicken skins to peels and bread scraps.
“It makes us more aware of what we’re ordering, you’re visually seeing it go into the buckets for composting so it subconsciously makes you do better,” Corti said.
From there, students from the school’s special education department get to do their part, grabbing the buckets from all over the school — and getting them ready to be picked up.
The school has partnered with the Rust Belt Riders, a Cleveland-based composting service that turns all this trash into treasure.
Intervention Specialist Cory Streets says his students role is simple but impactful.. teaching soft and hard skills in one swoop.
“They also learn repetition, the expectation of being at work, how to complete a job,” Streets said. “And this is a nice one because I can really step back with a lot of the kids and let them explore what will work and what won’t work.”
Lakewood Schools plans to eventually expand its composting program throughout every building in the district — and hopes other schools can realize it is doable as well.
Data shows that in just a few weeks, Lakewood Schools have been able to divert more than 500 pounds of food waste out of our landfills.
