You're reading: 12-year-old Ukrainians raise money to help schools recycle waste

Nikita Shulga, 12, cares so much about the environment that he found a way to cut the amount of food waste his school produces by more than 17,500 pounds per year.

Compola, a waste management start-up that he launched with classmate Sophia-Khrystyna Borysiuk, raised $6,000 and supplied 35 schools around Ukraine with composting stations to recycle waste from school cafeterias such as fruit and vegetable peelings, as well as porridge.

Such initiatives are crucial for Ukraine, a country of 5,500 landfills, one-third of which are either overused or do not meet state requirements. Kyiv alone produces over 1.2 million tons of waste annually or 10 percent of the country’s total waste volumes.

And only 5.8 percent of all Ukraine’s waste is either burnt or recycled. According to the city’s authorities, Energy, the only Ukrainian incinerating plant, works at full capacity. But starting from April it will stop for a couple of years since the plant does not meet European standards.

Fundraising efforts

But this doesn’t stop Shulga who has always been interested in ecology. When he offered his school’s administration to install a composter – a container with worms that recycle organic waste – they agreed, but only if he finds a way to finance it. He launched a crowdfunding campaign through GoFundEd, a platform for educational initiatives, in November 2016, and raised the required Hr 11,000 ($415) in less than two days.

With the help of their parents, Shulga and Borysiuk extended the campaign and overall gathered more than Hr 30,000 ($1,132) in 1.5 months – enough to finance seven composters in Kyiv’s schools.

To top it off, they also won a $5,000 grant through DreamActions, a competition platform for urban initiatives, and provided one school in each of Ukraine’s 25 oblasts with a composter. Some schools, including one in Vinnytsia, were inspired by Compola’s example and started to collect recyclable waste like paper and plastic to gain money for their own recycling systems.

Mykyta Shulga launched Compola, a waste management start-up, together with his classmate Sophia-Khrystyna Borysiuk. (Oleg Petrasiuk)

Easy recycling

Finance Lyceum is one of the Kyiv schools that received a composter from Compola. According to Shulga, it was one of the first ones that began to use the composter and one of the best examples of implementing it.

“It’s obvious that they use the composter every day and the school staff is very careful about doing everything right,” he said. The composters can be only loaded with fruit and vegetable waste, as well as porridge.

Tatiana Miroshnychenko teaches natural sciences at the Finance Lyceum that also participates in one of the United Nations Educations, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s projects. One of the topics she teaches is sustainable development.

“We have studied composting, but it was impossible for us to create a real composter for ourselves because our school is situated in the middle of a residential area,” she said. “So when Compola came to us with this offer, we got really excited.”

According to Shulga, authorities cannot complain about a school that uses a composter as long as it is done properly.

“If one follows all the rules, the composter will have no smell and the area around it will stay completely clean,” he said.

A composter is also easy to maintain.

“You alternate green layers of vegetable waste from a canteen with brown layers of fallen leaves or old grass, add some soil and warm water to the top, and worms just do their job,” he said. Usually, it takes three months to recycle the waste into compost that can be used as fertilizer for a green area around a school.

And while Shulga and Borysiuk dream that more schools will start recycling and will raise money to join Compola, they are also trying to gain support from the government.

Ukrainian Ecology Minister Ostap Semerak wrote on Facebook that he supported their project after meeting with Shulga in late 2017. So far no government funding followed through to support the project.

“Meet the possible future Ukrainian Minister of Ecology!” Semerak wrote posting a picture with Shulga.

Shulga, who will soon finish seventh grade, says he doesn’t want to become a minister, but rather prefers to continue developing as a young scientist and work on his social initiative. It gives him more freedom, he says.