Article Contributed on: 4/3/2009 1:02:19 PM
Whole Foods, along with several other Congress Park neighborhood businesses, have enthusiastically agreed to partner with The Denver Waldorf School in a school-wide composting project that will extend far beyond the school grounds itself.
Waldorf parent and full-time Metro College student
Kumella Aiu created the idea as part of her Social Enterprise major. Aiu, a mother of three daughters who attend the school, is overseeing this project, managed by the Waldorf third grade class. The intention is to not only create compost for the school's landscape, but to offer any excess composting material to the neighboring gardens of Congress Park where the school resides. Several area neighbors will also be contributing their "greens" in the way of grass clippings to help the project along.
The compost bins are being constructed with recycled wooden pallets donated by Whole Foods of Cherry Creek and Washington Park stores and Wildflowers Gifts at 12th and Madison. Wildflower's neighbor, Under the Umbrella Coffee Shop and Bakery, will be offering their coffee grounds and egg shells to the compost pile weekly, while Ace Hardware at 12th and Clayton supplied each classroom from kindergarten to 12th grade with a metal compost bucket at cost. Food scraps from student's lunches in addition to the school's organic lunch program will round out the compost offerings daily.
For more Information about The Denver Waldorf School's school-wide sustainable projects and curriculum subjects, visit
www.denverwaldorf.org. Aiu can be contacted directly at 303.941.3619.
Now in its 34th year of serving students ages pre-K through 12th grade, The Denver Waldorf School is located in the Congress Park neighborhood of Denver. It joins nearly 1,000 Waldorf schools as the largest, independent school movement in the world. The impulse behind Waldorf education is cultural and social renewal embraced with age-appropriate learning.