Thursday is the official 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and one of the local schools celebrating sustainability success is Lafayette Elementary, which shared the photo of fifth-graders Marques Titialii and Alyx Hastings, members of its Green Team, helping with composting. Students meet monthly to come up with ideas for reducing the school’s environmental/carbon footprint; in the first year, they recycled lunchroom milk cartons, and this year, they’re working to compost everything that goes uneaten at lunchtime. They got grants from Seattle Public Schools and from ReUsies, the West Seattle-based company (two Lafayette moms!) that makes and sells reusable sandwich/snack bags, and they set up the program – for which Green Team third, fourth and fifth-graders are fully responsible, including getting their schoolmates to put leftovers in the proper bins. The district is able to pay for compost pickup because the program has reduced the school’s trash pickup costs. Principal Virginia Turner wanted to congratulate “the Lafayette students, parents and staff – led by Laurie Hertzler – for taking on the challenge of composting more than 550 student/teacher lunches each day!”