A Tucson Teacher Is Turning Cafeteria Leftovers Into Chicken Feed With Black Soldier Flies

Every school cafeteria has the same problem at the end of lunch: half a slice of pizza, the last bite of a chicken sandwich, a tray of food nobody took. At Rincon University High School in Tucson, a science teacher and his students are building a way to keep that food out of the landfill, and the workers doing the heavy lifting are insects.

Phillip Dukes has received a $2,000 grant through Voya Financial’s 2026 Unsung Heroes awards program to develop what the school calls the RUHS Closed-Loop Food Systems Program, according to an October 7 report by Tucson Local Media. He is one of 50 educators nationwide selected for the award and one of two recipients in Arizona.

“I’m super honored,” Dukes told the outlet. “I’m really excited and just grateful for the program.”

Where the worms leave off

The project grows out of years of composting work at the school. Dukes said students started with traditional outdoor compost piles and then added vermicomposting, which uses worms to break down organic material. The program now runs 24 worm composting setups, each managed by a student team.

Worm bins have limits, though. They handle plant-based scraps well, but foods like pizza, chicken sandwiches, and other cafeteria leftovers stayed out of the process. That is consistent with standard home-composting advice: University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s guide to worm composting tells gardeners not to feed worms foods high in fats and oils.

Dukes went looking for another option and began experimenting with black soldier fly larvae. A small pilot last year convinced him the approach could become a bigger part of the school’s sustainability program.

“Essentially, I think that we’re just trying to create a system where as little food waste as possible ends up in the landfill,” he said. “As a part of that process, the students and I are building a system where we can transform those food wastes into some type of product that’s useful for us and our broader agriculture program.”

A fly that works for the garden

The word “maggot” tends to end conversations, so it helps to know what this insect actually is. Purdue University Extension describes the black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, as a non-pest insect native to the American tropics and now common across the southern United States. The adults look a bit like wasps, but they are harmless and do not feed. Oregon State University Extension adds that adults live only about two days, long enough to mate and lay eggs, and that they do not bite or carry disease.

The larvae are the ones with the appetite. Purdue lists a wide menu that includes household food waste, restaurant and grocery waste, spent brewing grains, and manure, and notes that black soldier fly composting can take more processed foods and animal products than a typical backyard pile. Its feeding guide works out to about 4 pounds of food per day for 10,000 larvae.

When the larvae are ready to pupate, they crawl out of their food to find a place to transform, which lets well-designed bins harvest them almost automatically through a ramp. Purdue describes black soldier fly larvae as a strong protein supplement for chickens and reptiles, with high calcium that supports eggshell production. The Galveston County Master Gardeners in Texas describe the converted larvae as a feedstuff of about 42 percent protein and 35 percent fat.

From lunch tray to egg carton

At Rincon, the plan is a loop. Dukes hopes the new operation can eventually process about 50 pounds of food waste a day, including unused cafeteria food and possibly leftovers students throw away. The larvae will then be harvested and fed to chickens or to fish in the school’s aquaponics system, cutting the amount of commercial feed the program has to buy.

From there the cycle keeps turning through the school’s poultry program. The chickens eat the larvae and lay eggs, and their manure returns to the school’s agricultural systems.

The grant will pay for equipment such as grow tents, lights, bins, racks, and fans. Dukes wants the setup to stay small and modular, something other teachers could copy without buying commercial-scale composting equipment.

Built by students, measured by students

For Dukes, the system is as much a lesson as a waste solution. Students will design and build it during class, then run it themselves, rotating through jobs such as feeding the larvae, checking conditions, and weighing what goes in and what comes out.

“We’re going to do it all together,” he said. “We’ll do the actual physical construction during class.”

The data side ties the project to biology, environmental science, engineering, and math. Students will track food waste, larval growth, and feed conversion, and compare the amount of food entering the system with the amount and value of what leaves it. There is a financial lesson too: students can calculate what the larvae are worth compared with the cost of buying livestock feed.

“We took something that was a problem and turned it into something valuable,” Dukes said.

He is also eligible for one of Voya’s three additional awards, worth $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. If more funding comes through, Dukes said he would like to expand the modular design and possibly help other schools set up similar systems. According to Voya, the Unsung Heroes program has awarded more than $6.66 million to 2,710 educators since it began in 1996.

What a backyard composter can borrow

You do not need a school budget to put the same ideas to work at home, and many Arizona gardeners already have the first piece in place.

If you keep a worm bin, the UA Extension guide recommends red worms, a shallow container no deeper than about 18 inches, bedding as moist as a wrung-out sponge, and temperatures between 55 and 77 degrees. Worms do best on fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and tea bags. Under good conditions, the guide says, worms can eat their weight in waste each day and double their population about every 60 days. In the low desert, that temperature range is the hard part, which is why shade, a garage, or a spot indoors matters most of the year.

If you have ever opened a compost bin and found it crawling with fat, grayish larvae, there is a good chance you have already met black soldier flies. Oregon State Extension says they will not harm you or your compost and actually speed up decomposition. If you would rather have fewer of them, its advice is to bury kitchen scraps well and cover them with 2 to 4 inches of dry material such as leaves or shredded paper, turn the pile, and let it heat up, since the larvae cannot survive above 113 degrees. In a worm bin, burying scraps deep in the bedding reduces competition, and the larvae will not harm worms or their eggs.

Gardeners who want to raise the larvae on purpose can follow Purdue’s plans for a simple rearing bin made from an 18-gallon tote, PVC pipe ramps for the larvae to climb out, and a hanging piece of corrugated cardboard where adult flies can lay eggs. Purdue suggests a varied diet, warns against overfeeding, and says the leftover material can go into the garden as a soil amendment that adds organic matter. It also cautions that this material does not replace fertilizer and can sometimes be high in salts, so it is worth testing before heavy use, which is good advice in Arizona, where salty soils are already a common challenge.

Backyard chicken keepers have the most obvious use for the harvest. A handful of larvae from the compost bin turns kitchen scraps into a protein snack the flock will happily chase.

None of that requires a grant. What Dukes’ students are learning, and what the rest of us can borrow, is a way of looking at a lunch tray: the leftovers are not the end of the story, just the start of the next meal for something else. In his words, he hopes students come away knowing they can make an immediate impact on a broader issue, and that it is fun and exciting to do it.