Educational Recommendations

Based on our experiences speaking at McNeil’s four adopted schools, there are several recommendations we can make to continue and improve composting education in the community of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico. Although it would be ideal to eventually expand this education program to all students, we believe it would be most beneficial to start with the students who have an interest in environmental issues. McNeil has sponsored a Recycling Team at each school where interested students join this club to help promote recycling and environmental efforts. Of the students we spoke to, these were the ones who were the most attentive and asked questions. It will be easier to encourage these students to begin composting. The composting education should be expanded to the whole school only after there is some success in educating and

encouraging the Recycling Team. Perhaps the Recycling Team could be renamed the

“Earth Team” so that it includes recycling, composting and potentially other activities.

The next recommendation is to complete all four lesson plans in order. They were designed to build upon each other; therefore if one lesson is omitted the curriculum

would be incomplete. Following the lesson sequence ensures that composting is not just a temporary subject, but an ongoing topic.

Lastly, when composting education is eventually expanded to include other students, some type of motivation is needed to encourage the students to participate.

Perhaps there could be a contest at each school and a prize for the class that creates the most successful compost pile. This would appeal to the students’ sense of competition and give them a reason to compost. A similar contest was run with the recycling program, the classroom that collected the most recyclable materials was rewarded.

Hopefully by educating the students and promoting composting the students will go home and start compost piles with their families.

An additional recommendation is to educate employees as well as plant visitors about McNeil’s composting project. A good way to do this is to post an educational display at the composting site. This will ensure that anyone who visits the site will be able to look at a diagram and better understand the process. Once McNeil has made their final decisions about the project and have begun implementation, we suggest that they create and post an educational diagram on-site. We created a sample diagram that can be found in Appendix H.

We also advocate that McNeil attempts to make knowledge of their composting project public. They have already done this to some extent. For example, Gloria Picò, a composting expert and representative from the Department of Agriculture, learned of our project from the local schools and came to visit McNeil’s compost site. She was

impressed by our efforts and McNeil’s environmental initiatives. She expressed that McNeil was an environmental leader and that their positive example will encourage many companies in the area to start compost sites of their own. Therefore, by publicizing their efforts, McNeil is helping to educate members of the corporate world.

We began the education process by reaching out to a small number of students at local schools. However, if our recommendations are followed, this educational

movement will expand to include other students, employees, visitors and other

companies. The expansion of the educational program will help to achieve our goal of improving the community by not only introducing composting as a waste management technique, but also encouraging it as a widespread practice.

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