Park City Community Foundation is collaborating with partners across the county to work towards our Zero Food Waste goal: divert and eliminate all food waste from our local landfill by 2030. Park City Day School (PCDS) hosted the first-of-its-kind Food Waste Challenge and proved that small actions add up to big impact!  

During the week of Earth Day, the Community Foundation teamed up with PCDS science teacher Andrea Hoppe to host a school-wide food waste challenge. With more than 200 students across pre-K through 8th grade, the school was the perfect partner to bring this initiative to life. 

Each student at PCDS is a member of the Buhos, Lobos, or Osos houses, so Momentum Recycling dropped off three 64-gallon food waste bins at the school to correlate with each house. Students took home compostable bags, collected food scraps from home, and filled their respective house bin.  

The results spoke for themselves: together, PCDS filled nearly three 64-gallon bins, diverting 960 pounds of food waste from our local landfill in just one week! Every student celebrated with a well-earned popsicle, and the Osos House received 300 points for diverting the most amount of food waste.  

“Partnering with Park City Community Foundation on this challenge was a tremendous honor,” said PCSD Science Teacher Andrea Hoppe. “Many of our students and families already know and respect the Community Foundation for the many ways it strengthens our community. Working together reinforced the idea that reducing food waste is a shared priority and responsibility. This challenge showed our students that caring for the environment doesn’t require one big action; it happens through hundreds of small choices made every day. Seeing our students and families work together to divert nearly 1,000 pounds of food waste was exciting, empowering, and fun!” 

We are incredibly grateful to PCDS and Andrea, who have been Zero Food Waste champions from the beginning, and the entire PCDS community for embracing this food waste challenge. Thank you also to Park City Community Foundation board member and PCDS-alumni parent Eyee Hsu for the initial idea and connection. Partnerships like this help build education, community awareness, and habit-building skills that we’ll need to reach our 2030 goal. 

We are committed to engaging and educating more students and families as we move forward in our Zero Food Waste Initiative. Want to get involved? Visit parkcitycf.org/zerofoodwaste to learn more.