She noted that kids throw a lot of food away during lunch, adding excess waste to the landfills.  With a new greenhouse coming in the spring, Ms. Belmont wanted to put the food scraps to good use by composting.  But she realized it would be a difficult project for kids to do in the winter.  After brainstorming, the students came up with feeding their chickens the food scraps. Six students from the 6^th grade have chickens at home and volunteered to take the scraps home in buckets. 

The Disney contest had prizes of up to $20,000 for the winning school. Students weighed garbage, collected data, took pictures, researched, built displays and models, and taught other students and adults how to sort their garbage into recycled chicken food. Their goal was to put less garbage in the landfill, and perhaps save parents’ money on chicken feed.

The class of 2017 (6^th grade) also initiated a paper recycling program at the school. They sent their portfolio to Disney on February 16th. Future plans include using worms to compost. We’ll let you know if the Andes sixth grade wins money for their school.~