NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Lunchtime will look different in school cafeterias this year thanks to the Rhode Island Recycling Project .

The project was created in 2021 and works to rescue and recover food that would otherwise be headed to the landfill.

Bins are now set up in the cafeteria at Stephen Olney Elementary in North Providence. There are separate bins for the landfill, compost, recycling, and liquid drainage.

There’s also a “food share table” where students can put uneaten and unopened food. It will be donated to people in need or reused in the school cafeteria.

The goal is to divert as much waste as possible away from the landfill.

“Our landfill is going to fill up by 2046 and if we don’t decrease it, then we need to find a new place for our trash. No one wants it in their town,” project facilitator Kendra Gay explained.

Gay got involved with the project after taking a food recovery course at the University of Rhode Island.

“We could end up like Connecticut who trucks it out to Pennsylvania for $94 million a year,” she added. “I don’t think us taxpayers want that, so we can extend the life of the landfill. We want to do everything we can to do that.”

At one school in Providence, there were 600 students, four lunch periods and 14 bags of trash, according to Gay. After implementing the project, she said they were able to get that down to two bags of trash.

The system has been implemented at 15 schools in Rhode Island so far, and organizers hope to get to 40 by the end of the year.

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