CHARLOTTE, N.C. – They call themselves the Bucket Brigade, a group of faculty and student compost geeks at Johnson & Wales University appalled that so much waste from the school’s 18 kitchens was landing in the garbage.

So, since January, J&W’s professors (they’re called chefs) have placed plastic buckets at each sink for vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, paper egg cartons and towels, bread and cake layers _ anything that can be decomposed and turned into compost.

They’ve converted the culinary school’s iconic spire above West Trade Street into a greenhouse where 1,100 seedlings are germinating.

And out back, in a parking lot, they’ve fenced in a concrete slab for a garden where those seedlings will be planted in 5-gallon buckets full of the compost made from the food scraps.

From that garden, they’ll harvest a variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs that will be used in the 18 kitchens.

It’s all part of a green curriculum pushed by chefs Robert Brener and Paul Malcolm and a student club that calls itself “The Coop.”

“It’s full circle. We’re trying to launch an earth-to-table movement _ that you have to care for the food before it comes through the back door,” Brener said. “There’s a generation that thinks food is a bunch of big, long words on a label that you don’t recognize.

“We want students to understand that a tomato that’s been carefully grown has a dramatically different taste from one that’s been mass-produced.”

UNIQUE TO CHARLOTTE CAMPUS

The Charlotte, N.C., campus is the only one among Johnson & Wales’ four campuses undertaking the green initiative.

Brener and Malcolm had been trying to start the movement for two years, when they were approached to build a rooftop garden by students Jennifer Merryman and Lindsay Higgins.

The chefs knew little about gardening, or composting.

They called Nadine Ford with Mecklenburg County’s Solid Waste and Recycling Department. Ford teaches plant management and composting courses, but didn’t have any available at the time.

She suggested the two chefs learn the techniques at an overgrown garden plot in the Belmont neighborhood near uptown Charlotte that had become neglected.

So each Saturday since October, Brener and Malcolm, students and neighborhood locals have spent mornings attacking weeds, rocks, syringes, condoms and plumbing from a torn-down house and building beds to grow vegetables and fruits for the residents to eat.

Food has begun to spring, mostly onions and spinach for now.

Once there are more vegetables to harvest, they plan to start teaching cooking, gardening and composting classes to help the residents _ and bring a community together.

“Food is something that can bind a community,” Brener said. “We are trying to build a beautiful spot, a place accessible for everyone to gather. Everything we’re learning in Belmont, we’re taking back to the school to teach students.”

340,000 POUNDS OF SCRAPS

Each academic year, the Charlotte campus generates about 340,000 pounds of scraps that can be composted.

The buckets are emptied into large containers at the loading dock, where a Charlotte company picks up the scraps and turns it into compost.

“Whatever compost we need, they bring us a dump truckload,” Brener said.

There’s a pile of it next to the parking lot garden on campus. Students have built the garden. Plants will be grown in buckets, and empty Pepsi syrup barrels will capture rain to water the plants.

The movement appears to be catching on.

“This is the perfect place in Charlotte to start something like this,” said Merryman, the Charlotte student.

“Around here, they call me the ‘compost girl.’ I know I get on people’s nerves about composting, but it is important that we do this here. We’re not going to be just line cooks, but coming out of Johnson & Wales we’re going to be the industry leaders.

“We need to show people that food doesn’t come off the back of a truck.”Higgins, the Asheboro student, recently visited two five-diamond restaurants that compost and buy locally.

“A lot of restaurants are doing this because they’re generating a lot of waste,” said Higgins, who has a master’s degree in plant biology from Duke.

“They also recognize the taste difference. If people are paying premium prices, these restaurants realize they need to use premium ingredients that come from local growers.” 

• David Perlmutt