By working to combine community volunteering, sustainability education and hands-on work, the College of William and Mary’s budding Compost Club hopes to enrich the greater Williamsburg community and grow something beautiful.
The College already has its own compost system via various green bins on and around campus, so Compost Club has a different mission regarding composting, or the sustainable practice of turning organic matter into fertilizer. The organization partners with the Matthew Whaley Elementary School, just a 15-minute walk from the College, and it aims to educate third through fifth-graders on sustainability and composting.
Compost Club President Chloe Thompson ’27 developed the framework for Compost Club during her senior year of high school. There, Thompson created a system in which she gathered student volunteers to use the compost at her former elementary school garden. After getting her footing at the College her freshman year, Thompson knew she wanted to create a similar system in Williamsburg.
“I definitely still had this interest and this want to be able to engage younger students with discussions of climate change and more positive feedback about individual change and choices you can make, especially at a young age,” Thompson said
This fall, Thompson’s focus was on getting the club registered as an official student organization, a process she said the College made easy for her. She also looked for an elementary school to partner with, and landed on Matthew Whaley because of their existing community garden.
Meanwhile, Thompson worked on building a presence on campus to have the volunteer support ready for school visits by spring. Mia Kehler ’27 came into the Compost Club early on as a friend of Thompson’s, and as the Head of Student Outreach, focused on recruiting college students with efforts ranging from running the organization’s Instagram page to making fliers.
Compost Club began meeting weekly during the fall semester, primarily to plan lessons for the elementary schoolers, which range from an overview of composting to individual contributions to sustainability to plant identification. Many members further came up with their own lesson topics that sparked their interest.
“Exec especially, it is pretty open to ideas, especially because we’re such a new club, so you can kind of help form it in whatever direction you’d like to see it go,” Kehler said.
In the spring, Compost Club will begin weekly trips to Matthew Whaley on Friday afternoons. About five volunteers will deliver lessons and work on collecting and creating compost. Thompson hopes to find elementary school students to serve as “compost ambassadors” and collect compostable waste during lunch. The club will then use the compost system of the College’s Dining and Sustainability program or drop it off at Fill Happy, a local business with a composting service.
As the weather gets warmer, the club will also begin taking students to Matthew Whaley’s garden to make use of the compost they make. Thompson thinks this hands-on practice will be a rewarding experience all around.
“The kids can compost, and then go out in the garden and plant a plant, and use the compost, and see it growing and visualize the change in front of them that they’re making,” Thompson said. “I think it’s a very similar effect for the students at William and Mary to be able to see the students get excited about something, or to see their interactions and relationships and the way they teach them actually have an impact.”
Despite their environmental focus, many members of Compost Club are not, in fact, environment and sustainability majors. Thompson herself is a public policy major with a conservation focus. Meanwhile, Compost Club member Chris Tillotson ’26 is a data science major who is nonetheless passionate about sustainability in his personal life.
On the other hand, membership has plenty of crossover with other environmental student organizations at the College, including the Student Environmental Action Coalition and Veggie Society. Thompson promoted her club to other eco-conscious organizations’ meetings and in environmental science and policy classes. Tillotson, for one, was recruited when Thompson visited a Botany Club meeting.
With Compost Club, Thompson wants to make it easier to enter what she called the “sustainability bubble” of environmental groups.
“I think it can be really daunting to join one, and it feels like everyone knows everything there is to know about sustainability,” Thompson said. “Also, I think there can be some toxicity about it, like if you don’t do this, you’re not doing your part, which is not how it should be.”
New to composting herself, Kehler added that one of Compost Club’s strengths is its openness to different types of students, whether they have experience with sustainability or not.
“I think everyone, especially our age, is pretty aware of how important it is to be greener in ways that you can,” Kehler said. “So, I think everyone has some sort of a stake in it for sure because we all deal with the consequences of not doing that.”
One opportunity to expand Compost Club’s campus connections was WCWM’s Radio Listenathon. There, Compost Club members sold cookies and made collages out of magazines to fundraise. Thompson and Tillotson both noted the event as a favorite memory with the club so far.
“I saw a few people from that day show up to meetings later, so it worked well,” Tillotson said.
Thompson collaborated with Matthew Whaley’s head of afterschool programs and the volunteer master gardener who runs the school’s garden to hone her activities for the kids and make sure they would be doable.
“That’s always my fear, is like, maybe these lessons will be boring or too much, or things like that, because I’m not an educator,” Thompson said. “So, it was nice to get reassurance from them.”
Kehler said Compost Club’s main mission — making the climate crisis less scary — is one that both children and students at the College can benefit from.
“For me personally, when I start to think too much about it, it freaks me out, and I freeze and I can’t think straight,” Kehler said. “So, I think it’s good to just slowly ease them into the topic and say, ‘it’s a big deal, but you can do something about it. It’s in your hands.’”
In the future, Thompson hopes to promote more collaboration with other sustainability organizations at the College and partner with more local schools or gardens.
Those interested in joining Compost Club can keep up with it on Instagram through the handle @compostclubwm, join its email list through TribeLink or simply show up to its meetings. The spring interest meeting will be held Monday, Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. in Chancellor’s Hall 113. Thompson says students can join at any time in the semester and that regular attendance isn’t necessary to come volunteer.