Implementing community composting in primary schools: First experiences at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.

As stated by European regulations, biowaste must be source-separated and collected for its proper treatment and valorisation for resource recovery. In Spain, new legislation requires municipalities to totally separate in origin domestic biowaste by the end of 2023, highlighting the fact that domestic or community composting will be an optimal way to deal with these requirements. In this context, different communities are being engaged to perform composting as a way to valorise their own biowastes and contribute to a much more stablished circular economy. In this sense, the “Citizen Arenas for improved Resource management and Environmental quality (CARE)” project aims to bring the composting science to children at primary schools to raise their awareness on the different environmental impacts that our own biowastes can generate if we do not manage them properly, and to give them the opportunity to learn the benefits that compost represents. To achieve the goals of the CARE project, different formation and information sessions have been imparted to professors and students at a selected school in Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain) prior to the installation of a community composting system composed by four different 1 m³ composting modules. The selected school has a daily average generation of domestic-like biowaste of 50 kg, which is daily introduced in the first composting module together with shredded pruning waste supplied by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona gardening services to be treated. Along with the composting process, typical process parameters such as material temperature, interstitial oxygen, humidity and volatile solids, as well as material’s biodegradability and gaseous emissions, are being monitored continuously to ensure the proper functioning. Surveys will be done at the beginning and the end of the process to evaluate the change of the school community regarding environmental concern. The results will be presented during the conference.