Horta and composting project: solid waste treatment in public school in Urutaí

Abstract

The cultivation of vegetables in school gardens with the participation of students contributes to food education, especially when the products are used in school meals. The objective of this work was to make the students aware of the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling the waste generated in the day to day, through composting and the use of the compost in the garden made in the school. This work was conducted at the Maria Cândida de Jesus Municipal School, in Urutaí, GO, with the target audience being the elementary school students and servers of this school. The project was based on a theme lecture (environmental question), proposing the recycling of organic waste generated at school, the practice of composting and its use in the school garden, demonstrating the importance of vegetables in food, botanical aspects and their main forms of cultivation. Then the compost was built with the objective of recycling the school's organic waste, so the compost with Californian worms was prepared so that students and servers could monitor the process weekly. The compost was used to fertilize the vegetables 120 days after the beginning of composting. For the construction of the garden in the school were prepared three raised beds with composted bovine manure. The seedlings of parsley, chives, cabbage, carrot, jiló, okra, zucchini and sweet potatoes were made in trays of expanded polystyrene with standard substrate. The results demonstrated the enthusiasm of the students in the participation of the proposed activities, through the selective collection of the residues, as well as the monitoring of the composting used in the garden and the implementation of the vegetable garden.