Manhattan High’s inaugural-year interest group Environmental Science Investigations has needed some help from fellow peers to find how much waste can be reused.

Students involved in ESI have attempted several waste audit work days and it hasn’t worked the way they want to. By collecting enough waste and compostable materials, ESI wants to find how much trash from the lunchroom can be composted to grow plants with.

A couple of days last week during lunchtime, ESI members volunteered to sit next to the lunchroom trash cans with a bucket to gather compostable waste like banana peels and orange peels. The buckets are taken to the classroom to be weighted to track how much waste has been collected.

When ESI finds the right amount of compost for the investigation, they will then plant it into the dirt to fertilize it. After they fertilize the dirt, their ultimate goal is to plant fruit and other food to use in Manhattan High’s own cafeteria.

However, ESI wants more data and statistics to back up their hypothesis. Most students don’t think much of it but at the end of the process, it will not only help reduce the amount of waste but it will also help the environment by providing the fertilizer and reducing the waste that would normally be going to a landfill.

“We’re mostly looking for data on how many compost stations we should set up and more members would always help,” junior Andrew Ward said.

Not only is the interest group not getting enough help from the students for giving the volunteers the waste, students from Manhattan High can also volunteer to help take compostable materials from other students before it gets thrown away.

Last Tuesday, ESI had their second trash audit to gather information and waste but didn’t get what they wanted because there wasn’t as much compostable materials. Instead, the interest group wants to find a day that there’s a good choice for lunches with the waste that they need and for other students to participate.

“We just need to do the trash audit on a day with more compostable material,” Ward said.

ESI has found it hard to collect enough information to solve the investigation. Lately the interest group has been working on cleaning up the courtyard at MHS to create a butterfly waystation but without students’ help, ESI has to focus on the waste audit first. Sometime this month they hope to conduct another waste audit, making it the third attempt. Members hope the third time will result in higher numbers.

“We didn’t have enough people at the trashcans,” ESI sponsor Clancy Livingston said. “It wasn’t a great day to pick.”

Once the interest group finds the right day to hold the next waste audit, they can find how much waste they’re saving and how much waste they can use to put into a compost pile to enrich the soil and grow plants to help the environment.