The Smallest of Efforts Can Make the Most Effective Change

The San Dimas High School Environmental Club and other club leaders have come together to take the task of promoting food compost into their own hands during the upcoming months. The club has partnered with San Dimas Public Works to provide countertop compost pails that will be passed out by the students.

Composting has become mandatory in the state of California, and the cities are responsible to implement the law that requires their residents to compost. San Dimas has been one of the many cities to quickly promote and enforce this mandate. Despite this mandate, many residents have struggled to jump-start their compost journey and have only been exposed to the works of recycling. Mila Mattson, an Environmental Club leader expresses her concern that “some people might know about the pails, but might not know how to access them. While other people might not know about the pails and if they become educated they could want one.” With the promotion of the countertop compost pails, this group of student leaders plans to bring recognition to the city’s mandate and the steps of composting.

Countertop compost pails serve a purpose as a sort of middleman. The pails are us

ed only for a couple of days as a placeholder for the user’s everyday food scraps and once filled, they are dumped into the large green compost trashcan. San Dimas countertop pails come with a pan-flip that provides users with ways to keep the pails clean and instructions on which foods are compost friendly. The city and the club leaders hope that the pails will help the residents with the task of composting properly.

The club leaders plan to start the distribution of the pails with San Dimas High School and Lone Hill Middle School by having the students or parents of students fill out a form. Once the form is filled then the club leaders would hand out pails during lunch, monthly, towards the end of each month. Mattson mentions the club’s “overall goal is to hopefully spread [them] throughout the whole city and get it to as many people as possible.” The small step of starting with the schools, then reaching out on a larger scale is to ease the transition into composting for the residents of San Dimas.

Although some people may argue that small tasks such as food composting will not make a difference in improving the state of Earth’s ecosystem, the club leaders have a different view on that responsibility. Mattson proselytized, “I know a lot of the events that we do, feel as though we are not making a difference [in the environment] and feel so small but this is our opportunity to take charge in helping the environment, as much as each of us possibly can.” The efforts of being environmentally aware will not go unnoticed no matter how small they are because they will still be contributing along with millions of other people’s efforts. This project hopes to promote environmental consciousness and “as long as you are being conscious, that is your own way of positively contributing toward the environment,” Mattson urges.