To the Editor,

I am a Princeton resident, member of Boy Scout Troop 43, and soon to be a senior at Princeton High School. This year, I received my Eagle Scout Award for a project that involved recycling shipping pallets into compost bins for many of the schools and gardens around Princeton.

What spurred this? I was first introduced to gardening and composting, alongside an excited young group of my peers through the gardening program at Riverside Elementary. With a fresh, variegated array of plants that could easily be picked and eaten on the spot, the garden was one of the most engaging and dynamic parts of the school’s property; there was an endlessly changing mixture of colors and shapes, transitioning with the seasons. Working alongside the garden coordinator, Dorothy Mullen, I learned to value both the healthy self-grown foods and the idea of sustainability that the garden and composting espoused.

Those values are ultimately what drove me, working for Sustainable Princeton, to contact the garden coordinators of the many unique gardens and schools around Princeton, ranging from the elementary level to those of the University’s graduate housing. The construction was completed with the aid of many tireless volunteers. By spreading the ideas of sustainability and renewability at the academic level, we hoped to spur further awareness, and perhaps elicit interest in a similar program called Curbside Composting that Sustainable Princeton was also promoting. Things went farther than I could even have imagined, though probably due more to hard work on Sustainable Princeton’s part than anything I cobbled together.

Fast forward a few months from the time of the project’s completion and the Princeton Regional School system has signed a waste hauling contract involving food pickup, in addition to a sustainability resolution relating to energy efficiency, waste management, composting, recycling, etc. In addition, membership to Curbside Composting has been growing.

I really have to applaud Princeton for leading this overall effort, as it is the first and only municipality in New Jersey with a curbside organic collection/compost program. Seeing as it is only a pilot at this time, however, I would really like to stress that it is still currently short on members. Perhaps this can drum up some more interest? With recognition of the program still quite limited, I can only encourage everyone to take a look for themselves. Most of the information can be found at Sustainable Princeton’s website http://sustainableprinceton.org.

I believe that the garden program and the composting have had a great personal impact on myself, and also perhaps the innumerable other individuals who have experienced them, and would like to acknowledge their enormous formative influence in the hopes that both continue to work their magic on residents, adults and children alike. If Princeton can continue to develop in this direction, I couldn’t imagine a better place to be.

Anthony Teng

Riverside Drive