WELLFORD, S.C. – School officials in Spartanburg County, South Carolina are finding ways to deal with the massive amount of trash and food waste created by first lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch program.

Wellford Academy teacher Becky Carson told WYFF she recently convinced officials to partner with Atlas Organics to compost lunch leftovers students refuse to eat, as well as other cafeteria trash, to teach students about “what being a positive environmental steward is.”

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Spartanburg District 5 “was supportive when we voiced our concerns about having so much trash,” she said.

Atlas Organics partners with schools, including the nearby Spartanburg District 7, to turn lunch leftovers into usable compost, and it’s worked well, said Jim Davis, company spokesman.

“If you or I had been implanted with this concept early in our life, I think things would look differently, environmentally, for us now,” he said.

Officials at the Cleveland Academy of Leadership in Spartanburg District 7 have worked with Atlas to teach students how to separate their food from other items for compost, and teacher Sheila Jones told WYFF students are taking the lessons to heart.

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“This is not just a school thing, this is an everyday thing that they need to take home,” Jones said.

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Students seem to understand why it’s important to not simply throw away their lunches.

WYFF aired footage of school officials tossing leftovers into a separate bin that Atlas Organics picks up regularly, and many of the trays contained vegetables that appear virtually untouched.

The situation is similar in schools across the country since federal officials imposed strict restrictions on calories, fat, sugar, sodium and other nutritional elements of school food in 2012, a move championed by first lady Michelle Obama as a means of combating childhood obesity through bureaucracy.

Since federal officials imposed the restrictions, school food waste has skyrocketed by more than $1 billion annually, as the new regulations force students to take a fruit or vegetable, whether they want it or not.

Schools with a lot more waste than they can handle have been forced to find creative ways of dealing with the overflow, including schools in New Mexico and Rhode Island that send their leftovers to pig farms, and a school in Nebraska that uses it for worm food, EAGnews reports.

In South Carolina, Atlas Organics is composting its first batch of school food waste in hopes of eventually distributing rich soil to “farms in the upstate,” WYFF reports.

“We call ourselves sort of the table to farm movement,” Davis said. “You’ve heard the farm to table, we’re trying to complete the circle.”