No wasters in Miss Lee’s class

In recent months, a government-sponsored campaign has cropped up on bus shelters and billboards. On one poster, an alien-like creature tosses piles of food into the bin. “Don’t be a big waster. If you can’t finish your food, don’t waste it”, reads the slogan beneath.

“We’re teaching them by doing, not just by telling. We make it a habit,” says Karen Lee Ka-wai, a teacher at the Good Counsel Catholic Primary School in Cheung Shan Wan. She has pioneered a food waste management programme run by the students themselves. The school of 650 children is squashed between a highway and a hill. There is no playground and for lack of space, the children eat lunch at their desks. But the school maintains a fertile rooftop garden teeming with dill, rosemary, basil and mint and also produces kilograms of rich compost.

At lunch time each day, children who finish their full meal collect a stamp, which they can cash in at the end of the month for a gift. After everyone has finished, two green ambassadors carefully sort through whatever is left over, separating rice and solids from sauce, which cannot be composted.

In a sixth form classroom of 28 children, Thursday’s waste fills two small, takeaway boxes and a plastic bag stuffed with 28 banana skins. The two ambassadors skip down four flights of stairs to a waste station in the courtyard. The waste is weighed by two sash-wearing station monitors, both less than a metre high. They carefully record the figure in a notebook before emptying it into a medium-sized trolley bin. “Remember to wash your hands,” says Lee, as they skip back to class.

Inside the bin, food waste is fermented for two weeks using an enzyme-rich powder called Bokashi. It is then buried and becomes fertile soil. Each part of the multi-step process is handled entirely by the children, with great enthusiasm, says Lee.