The first composting project in Brookline commenced April 5 after a ribbon cutting ceremony, headed by senior Yoel Abulaf. The Communications for Entrepreneurs course taught by Elon Fisher and Brittany Stevens, made up of about 35 students, was the platform in which the idea began.

A group of eight students including seniors Yoel Abulaf, Nisha Arole, Max Chapman, John Elcock, Alex Hur, David Kim, Chhany Minton, and Julianne Weishaus, were interested and began to investigate composting’s importance to the community.

Fisher said that Teen Center Program Director Mathew Cooney came into the class to speak about the problems and needs of the Teen Center. With him came George Zahka, his assistant, who introduced the students to the idea of composting at the Teen Center.

“Right now, we’re accepting vegetable scraps and food scraps, stale bread and old rice and coffee grounds and tea bags,” Zahka said. “The only food scraps we’re not taking right now are meat and dairy. And so, folks can collect them in an old soup pot or they can collect them in a compostable bag and when it gets full they can bring it over to the Teen Center and just to the left of the front door you drop your compostable bag into the bin or you dump your bucket into the bin and bring your bucket home.”

Each week, the “Save that Stuff” company will come to pick up the food scraps from the bins. They will be brought to farms and composted.

Senior Nisha Arole, a student in the group who is in charge of the social media aspect of the initiative, said that it’s hard to get the word out about the project.

“It was difficult because I feel like a lot of people don’t know about it to begin with so it’s hard getting the word out, and it’s pretty hard starting something on social media,” Arole said.

Governor Michael Dukakis was expected to attend the ribbon cutting Tuesday afternoon, but arrived after the ceremony concluded.

Fisher said that this is the first time that students have come so far with their projects in his course.

“This is the second year of the course, and we had a couple projects and they didn’t get very far. And the cool thing is that we have three projects that went beyond the first month and the second month and are carrying on past that. It’s been neat to see that Brookline kids can have a lot of power,” Fisher said. “That’s kind of cool.”

To commence the project, Zahka had to order two big, black compost bins, the same bins that are used in Boston. They had to ship them in from Italy, the only place that produces these types of compost bins.

Fisher said that these specific compost bins are necessary for the success of the project.

“One of the things that George was saying was you have to start this problem right,” Fisher said. “Because if you set it up and it attracts rodents, and it leads to trash all over the place and people throw things they aren’t supposed to throw in it, and birds fly in it, people would be upset. Rightly so. But the thing about these is that they’re totally rodent proof. It’s metal on the outside. It closes automatically so it seals.”

According to Fisher, for the first steps of the process, the students had to find out if people were interested or not. He said that even in the snow, the students went into town and advocated for the cause.

“I remember it was really cold and they went and they stood in front of elementary school and stopped parents and said ‘If we had this would you be interested?’” Fisher said. “And the thing that struck them was that, it was freezing cold, and parents would run up and say ‘Yes! Yes!’ And they were blown away.”

From there, the group went to town officials in the Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC), which deals with garbage, recycling and compost. They created a presentation and got their composting idea approved. According to Fisher, they spoke with different community groups and received donations which were not part of their initial idea.

“People were saying ‘Yeah, yeah, we want to support it, tell us what we can do.’ And they received lots of donations.”