ESI helping with composting and investigations

Mason Alberto, Staff Writer

Environmental Science Investigations (ESI) is in it’s inaugural year of being an actual club at Manhattan High and is working on their first investigation.

In its first investigation, ESI is conducting a trash audit and collecting compost to help the environment. Tuesday, students involved in ESI are going to take compostable trash and use it to fertilize dirt to grow more food. The students are going to stand by the trash cans with signs to tell other students to give them compostable items for them to use during first and second lunch. With the food they collect, ESI will then create a compost onsite. In the future, the club hopes to collect compostable items and grow food using compostable material to use in our own lunches.

“I’m really excited to help the environment and plan on doing a lot more,” junior Andrew Ward said.

With the waste and compostable food, ESI will plan to use it and plant it with dirt to make fertilizer, which helps plants grow. At the end of every experiment, ESI students put together data to see how much their project helped the environment.

“Over the course of time it will help the community and environment,” sophomore Elora Neff said.

With this investigation, ESI is weighing the compostable items to collect data, then planting them onsite and growing food with it. In the end, this investigation will help the environment because it enriches the soil and will reduce greenhouse gases and methane production.

“It was fun and interesting to learn and see all the compost we collected,” Ward said.

Manhattan High’s ESI club is the first to be student led in the district. Sometime in November, the club will take place in creating a monarch waystation to let Monarch butterflies land and stop if they need to by planting seeds on school grounds. The club is still growing and still coming up with future experiments to conduct.