Student Spotlight

Compost to Compost

An easy way to recycle – without the big blue bins

When 14-year-old Pia and 11-year-old Freddie Charlton moved to New Albany from their environmentally minded hometown, they sought out a way to help their new community.

“Portland, Oregon, is quite progressive with things like composting and recycling,” says their dad, Mark Charlton. “So, when we got here, we started to actively seek that out.”

In 2019, Pia found an opportunity for the family through a friend from school. The friend’s mother, Mona Barber, was starting a new organization called Kids That Compost (KTC).

“It was then Pia and Freddie’s mission to create the movement in New Albany,” says Mark.

Pia wanted to create the New Albany chapter because of her own passion for the environment.

“I really care for the environment,” she says. “It’s a really big topic on my mind. … I was looking out for things that I can do, and composting is a small thing, but if I could set it up in New Albany and get other people to join, that’s a big step.”

Freddie became passionate about KTC after he and a group of members toured a landfill.

“After seeing the big landfill, I’m like, ‘We all have to change,’” he says. “Everybody is putting into it, … but they’re not taking anything out.”

For a service charge of $20 a month, KTC provides users with a bucket and compostable liners to be filled with food scraps. Every Tuesday in New Albany, KTC picks up the compost, replaces the liner and takes the food waste to local farms.

The KTC New Albany chapter is also the first to offer composters fertilizer made from their compost. In addition to getting young people Pia and Freddie Charlton

What you can put in your KTC bucket:

• Fruits and vegetables • Grains and pastas • Baked goods • Beans • Coffee grounds and tea • Eggs and eggshells • Dairy products • Meat, fish and bones • Paper towels and tissues without cleaning chemicals on them • Egg cartons • Greasy pizza boxes (the clean part should be recycled) • Wood • BPI certified compostable plastic products

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involved in their community, it’s beneficial for the environment and convenient, too.

“As a user,” says Mark, “my favorite thing (about KTC) is it’s so easy.”

At their first meeting, Pia and Freddie helped create the composting bucket. Pia drew a broccoli, and Freddie drew a cucumber.

The siblings then set about recruiting and fundraising.

“We’d go around on our bikes with our brochures,” says Pia. “We’d stop at every mailbox and put a few flyers in. I think we passed out to 350 houses each.”

Pia and Freddie say they gained speech and communications skills through KTC’s door-to-door recruitment. They also learned how to make amazing lemonade.

“Over the summer, we did a lemonade stand once every week to go towards the Kids That Compost,” says Freddie, “and every single person that

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From the Kids That Compost Facebook page • George Washington composted • 76 percent of Franklin County’s landfill could have been diverted • A hot compost pile can reach temperatures of 170 degrees Farenheit in just a few days

bought it, we also gave them a flyer and talked about (KTC).”

During lemonade sales, the duo showcased their family’s empty composting bucket as they explained the KTC structure. Some neighbors didn’t buy lemonade, but still stopped by to learn.

“It was a good way to engage in conversation with people,” says Mark.

In Franklin County, residents put one million pounds of food waste into the landfill every single day. The food in those landfills can never decompose.

“Over half of (the landfill) could have been recycled, composted or reused,” says Pia. “It didn’t need to all go to the landfill.”

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What all can be composted? Practically all food products as well as some types of paper. To make it easier for the users, KTC has the instructions printed on the back of the buckets.

Through KTC, composting has become an easy way in central Ohio to help both the environment and the community.

“I quite like the idea (of composting) because I feel like I’m actually contributing towards the community and the world in the long run,” says Pia. “It’s just really the idea of helping the environment, even if it’s like composting an apple core or something small, I feel like I’m doing something.”

Sarah Grace Smith is an editorial assistant. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.