Kinley, your 2021-2022 cabinet member, here with a report on my CAN DO plan to reduce food waste. I am proud to report that my CAN DO plan is in place at my school, Territorial Elementary, and it has even expanded to include composting milk cartons, filling up our water bottles at a water station, recycling lunch trays, and all students (kindergarten-5th grade) are now part of the composting program in their classrooms and our cafeteria.
As a refresher, my plan is to help reduce food waste using my three point plan…my CAN DO method. I have emailed teachers and principals from our two other schools in Junction City. Unfortunately, I did not hear back from too many, but I realize that this has been a busy time for teachers and students. I’m not giving up, though! I am going to send a compost bucket to the middle school that I will be attending next year. I can put the compost bucket in the staff room so that the staff can start small. Next year when I am there, I can continue to add composting into my new school’s classrooms and cafeteria.
For the remainder of this school year and even into next year, I plan on continuing to try to help reduce food waste throughout Oregon and my schools. As I move on to middle school, I will keep trying to implement my CAN DO plan over to my new school. I am happy that I have heard that there are some teachers and community members who have started to compost at home and are calling my ice cream compost buckets, “Kinley’s CAN DO composters.”
Thank you to all of the people who are a part of Oregon’s Kid Governor program. I participated in a Kid Governor Leadership Summit on Zoom and enjoyed meeting other kids like me from Connecticut, Oregon, and New Hampshire. I have learned that if I don’t give up, I CAN accomplish a lot.
Sincerely and appreciatively,
Kinley