Earth Month is celebrated nationally in April, but students at Knapp School & Yeshiva demonstrate they care about the environment throughout the entire school year.

The school already had recycling services in place, as well as the means to compost, but the latter wasn’t organized in a productive way, said Troye Evers, who teaches students in the Transition Program. Troye and his students set out to change that, starting by making sure each classroom was outfitted with a compost bin.

“Adding this to the recycling that we do, it’s helping the school be a little bit more green,” he said.

Troye also made signs that explain which items can be composted, recycled or thrown in the garbage, and those signs hang above the bins in each classroom.

Each afternoon, a student collects the compost materials from each class. Wearing gloves, the student pushes a cart carrying a lined bucket from room to room, emptying each classroom’s small compost bin into the bucket.

The student composter also collects prepackaged salads and vegetables that have expired and breaks them down, removing the vegetables to be composted and recycling the containers.

Then the student wheels the cart outside and puts the contents in the larger compost bin near the building.

Composting not only relies on the entire school to participate, but it also provides a school job and responsibility for the individual students who collect the compost materials. All but one of those students are in Troye’s transition program.