When Carolina Veith first enrolled her children Vincent, 9, and Lucia, 7, at Mary, Star of the Sea School last year, she spent time observing the everyday life on campus to get a sense of what she and her children could expect.

She liked the school and its administrators, faculty and staff. She liked the facilities and grounds. She liked the energy. But she couldn’t help noticing how much waste the school produced, particularly at lunch time in the cafeteria — inordinate in the family’s native Stuttgart, Germany; all too common perhaps in Hawaii and the rest of the United States.

“They were still using paper trays and plastic water bottles,” she said. “There was no separating, no composting.”

At their Waialae Iki home, the Veiths dutifully separate recyclables, compost their green waste to feed their garden, and make every effort to avoid bringing disposable plastics home with them. They do their part in the small but impactful ways in which they have become accustomed. Carolina thought it would make sense for the school to consider doing a few of the same things.

Though she didn’t wish to seem pushy, especially as a new parent at the small Catholic school, Carolina felt comfortable that the school’s principal would be receptive to what she had to suggest.

Was she ever.

“I’d always wanted to launch a Go Green program here, but it’s huge undertaking and it takes a group of people who are passionate about it to make it happen,” said Principal Margaret Rufo, who has been with the school for more than a decade as a teacher and administrator. “She had that passion, which is what made it so easy.”

With Rufo’s go-ahead, Veith began researching what other schools were doing to reduce the amount of waste they produce. Together with Rufo and the school’s parent-teacher group, strategies were reviewed, priorities set and goals adopted. In less than three months, the first phase of the program — centered on the school cafeteria — was underway.

In an effort to eliminate unnecessary waste, parents got together to purchase steel trays and utensils that could be washed and reused. With the money saved from not having to constantly restock disposable trays and utensils, the school’s in-house chef, Ivo Rossi, took it on himself to purchase a dishwasher to keep everything clean and sanitary.

Students were enlisted to serve, on a rotating basis, as “cafeteria rangers” who ensure that reusables, recyclables and trash are all properly separated and deposited into color-coded bins designed and constructed by school facilities manager Noel Patricio.

Now excess food and degradable waste is vermi-­composted using worms donated by parents Terry and Greg Lee. The nutrient-rich compost is used to nourish Rossi’s expanded fruit and vegetable garden, from which he draws nearly all the fresh ingredients for each day’s meal. (The papaya sorbet, we are told, is to die for.)

The school is also investing in paper shredders to break down white-paper waste into compostable material.

Around campus, garbage cans are gradually being removed (“they’re just invitations to throw away unnecessary waste,” Rufo says) and repurposed as compost containers.

Beyond all that, students are encouraged not to bring disposable materials to school. Instead of receiving bottled water with their lunches, students now bring their own reusable thermoses, which can be refilled at the school’s filtered-water dispenser. Empty plastic baggies are sent back home with a friendly note to wash and reuse.

“We’re trying to practice what we preach,” Rufo said. “We hear in the media so often about garbage in the ocean and the harmful effects of climate change, but no one does anything about it. We’re trying to show our students what each of us can do to make things better.”

The results have been impressive. The 165-student school used to produce about 95 pounds of cafeteria trash per week. That figure is down to approximately 22 pounds. Maintenance workers used to remove five barrels of garbage after each lunch period. Now there’s just one.

There’s even talk of packaging the high-value compost the school produces for fundraising, a most novel alternative to Zippy’s chili.

Having seen dramatic changes at play at his school, Vincent Veith said he’d like it if others joined the cause.

“I hope we can help more schools,” he said.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.