As part of the UC Office of the President’s plan to achieve a zero-waste university by 2020, students have been separating their food scraps into dining-hall compost bins since Fall Quarter, thanks to Housing, Dining and Hospitality at UCSD.
But as of now, the scraps are then tossed in with the trash because there isn’t a place to compost the material yet.
‘The composting program is a training program to get people used to the idea of separating their waste,’ said Krista Francis, sustainability manager for Housing, Dining and Hospitality.
Food scraps will be hauled to the Miramar landfill’s composting facility once proper permits are obtained.
I wanted to see how the well the ‘training’ was going, so I stationed myself by the numerous compost bins adjacent to the cafeterias in John Muir College, Revelle College and Earl Warren College.
I noticed bright yellow signs that read ‘Compost’ with a description below: ‘Food (no bones), disposables (cups, plates, napkins), check the Web site for the full list.’ But the majority of students just ignored these instructions and tossed all their trash into the nearest bin.
At first, it sounds silly that we’re being trained to compost, but this actually makes a lot of sense. Most of us don’t normally separate our waste, and composting requires a change in our habitual behavior.
But this change won’t happen if there isn’t some understanding of why we should be doing it.
I talked to a couple students at the dining hall, and most of them didn’t even know what compost is and why it makes a difference to throw a plastic wrapper in the trashcan and toss leftover food into the compost bin.
Compost is comprised of organic matter broken down into nutrients. As organic matter falls to the ground, it slowly decays and recycles minerals and nutrients needed for plants, animals and other organisms to thrive.
We can compost everyday items like paper napkins, apple cores, vegetable stalks and bread. But a good rule of thumb is that if it’s made of natural ingredients (read: not plastic), it can be composted.
Once the material is collected, we can speed up the pro
cess by using worms (vermicomposting) or making piles that attract microorganisms that break down and return nutrients to the earth.
The plants and animals that we consume take nutrients from the soil, and compost is a way of replenishing the land’s lost nutrients.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, compost enriches the soil, helps clean up contaminated soil and helps prevent pollution. Composting for fertilizer can reduce the need for water and pesticides.
And compost has also been scientifically proven to suppress plant diseases and pests, reduce or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and produce higher yields of agricultural crops.
Since that half-eaten personal pizza you trash from Sierra Summit is relatively clean (you were the one eating it after all) and biodegradable, throwing leftover food scraps in landfills is a waste of space. Not to mention, discarded grub tends to generate methane (a potent greenhouse gas) while decomposing in a landfill, but doesn’t do so in a compost bin.
By diverting waste, we can ease the strain on the nearby Miramar landfill and return nutrients to the land.
Even if you’re not using composted soil, public agencies use it to landscape parks, recreational areas and public property, and to clean up contaminated or eroded areas. If you’re composting at home, you can use your waste to enrich your garden.
A student group named the Compost Team has heeded the call of environmental stewardship and created a model of onsite composting here at UCSD.
Every weekday evening, several students arrive at Sierra Summit and truck the leftover vegetable scraps from meal preparations over to their compost site, which is located in a bamboo-fenced area next to the UCSD Challenge Course.
The setup includes several shovels, a few tumblers (raised drums for composting) and piles of decomposing matter. Students then unload the food scraps, combine them with mulch and cover the mixture with a tarp. Hungry microorganisms do the rest.
So why don’t Compost Team members pick up the scraps in all dining-hall bins?
Considering that they already have a daily haul of 100 pounds of vegetable and fruit scraps from Sierra Summit’s kitchen and 50 to 60 pounds from the Faculty Club, there simply isn’t enough manpower to accommodate our waste.
It makes more sense to obtain a permit and haul the compost to an industrial off-campus site. It would be great to eventually have an on-campus composting site that could accommodate all of our food waste, but until we have enough manpower, the Compost Team will have to make an impact by educating students.
Because the best composter is an informed one, student-run grassroots movements are valuable. Simply providing bins without informing students as to why they’re composting will only get our university so far.
Collaboration between the students and the university will make campus composting a reality, but progress starts with us.
Dining halls are providing the tools, but the students are the ones who need to have the proper mindset for composting to work.
By understanding how to compost, we can get over the unsightly issue of solid waste and gain a sense of environmental stewardship.
Composting fits into the idea of recycling, but also takes a step further because the product of this process can be directly beneficial to us.
Contrary to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind philosophy, an understanding of composting promotes awareness of organic wastes as potential resources rather than just as something gross to be thrown away and forgotten.