Palmetto High School rising senior Emma Angeletti is passionate about the environment. She and her siblings have created a community service project and environmental non-profit called back2earth with the goal of educating people about the environment and convincing them to begin composting, among other things.
One of the problems is full landfills and food waste in those landfills.
“A lot of people end up throwing away food,” she says.
That food waste creates problems in the form of methane gases.
“Huge amounts of methane are created in landfills,” she says.
The solution is compost piles or boxes in yards.
“That’s one of the ones we promote,” she says.
Composting creates rich nutrients that can be put back in the soil. That helps agriculture reduce the need for fertilizers and improves water retention in the soil, which means less watering. Composting is great for gardens but can be done by those who don’t garden but are happy to help the environment.
“You do it in a compost box which is closed, with a mesh on top. An animal cannot open it,” she says. “If done right, the most is it’s going to attract is worms, which is good.”
She and her siblings have done school presentations to talk about the benefits of composting. They are working on starting a composting pile at George Washington Carver Middle School.
“It was in a relaxed environment. They were listening. It was great,” she says. “We had a Tupperware of fresh compost to show them that it’s not dirt, it’s fertilizer, and it’s nutrient rich.”
They started a composting program in South Miami with the hopes that they can make enough compost to sell to farmers.
“It would reduce the need for pesticides because it’s nutrient rich,” she says.
They’ve been working on the program throughout the year. They have given people buckets to collect the food scraps – minus meats, dairy products or eggs – and then they collect the buckets once a week.
They are hoping to bring composting to Palmetto High. Angeletti has talked to the Advanced Placement Environmental Science teacher about setting up a program and she’s interested.
“I was thinking about starting a club like that,” Angeletti says. “If that doesn’t work out, I’d try to make it an independent program.”
One of the catalysts of their commitment to the program is what they perceive as the dissolution of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in the past year. She and her siblings were talking about the situation and decided this was something they could do to help the environment.
“My brother has worked closely with the mayor of South Miami,” she says. “He’s also associated with the CLEO institute. He applied to be a climate speaker.”
They are putting an emphasis on educating the public because it doesn’t require extensive mobilization, it just requires someone to listen.
At school, Angeletti has been a member of Key Club and Interact. This past year she was in the Asian Culture Club.
She’s an athlete who is seeded sixth or seventh on the Palmetto Tennis Team. She played in most of the tournaments until it was time to go to the playoffs, where they could only take the top five seeds. The team went on to win the state championship.
She says playing for the team was awesome.
“I’m typically a shy person so I’m not that involved in school. The tennis team, it made me conquer that shyness,” she says. “The tournaments are a different energy. Even if I’m not playing its great watching.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
