College Looking to Further Expand Composting Program

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Author: Annie Wolfstone

Over the summer Occidental adopted a new composting program that converts nearly 75 percent of waste from the Johnson Student Center (JSC) into compostable material. The JSC, being the hub of campus life and the home to the Marketplace, is Occidental’s largest waste-producer.

The trash and post-consumer products left behind every day in the Marketplace, the Green Bean, conference rooms, the Office of Student Life and various other administrative offices are sorted and dumped into the college’s large trash compactor, which has been repurposed as the receptacle for compostables. Now, all of Occidental’s non-compostable and non-recyclable waste fits into a standard-sized dumpster.

Occidental dining staff will be doing the majority of the sorting for the Marketplace. As students’ dirty dishes arrive in the kitchen, the dining staff sorts the products according to their compostability. According to Vice President for Hospitality Services Amy Munoz, this isn’t much of a change for the staff.

“It’s just a third thing that we’re sorting, and it’s not recreating the wheel,” Munoz said. “It’s not a whole new thought process for our staff.”

The compostable items—including meat, fat, dairy, paper items and cloth, along with the starch-based containers and flatware—are then transported offsite by waste collection company Athens Services, based in Victorville, California.

 According to the Athens Services website, the company has existed for nearly 50 years as a family-owned and operated business, offering a host of different waste management services from trash collection to organic and special waste transportation.

Athens Services approached the College with the program proposal. Munoz said the plan made the composting process simple and financially feasible, so the College agreed to it.

Prior to Athens’ proposal, Occidental did and continues to compost a limited amount of organic waste on campus through the student-run F.E.A.S.T. garden. Dining Services gives F.E.A.S.T. old melon rinds and discarded fruits that the students then use to create a natural fertilizer for vegetables grown in the school’s garden.

The College aim that in the future it will also be able to utilize the compostable products that it sends out with Athens Services. The hope is that the compost will be returned to Occidental for use in the gardens around the campus, as Munoz explained in a July interview for Occidental’s website.

 

While many consider the program a step in the right direction, some students did raise concerns about the impact that this program will actually make.  

 

“One issue is that we’re shipping our compostables over the San Gabriel Mountains to the Mojave Desert,” UEP major Nicholas Conti (senior) said. Conti has reservations about the fuel consumption required to pick up and haul away the College’s compostable materials. 
“We must be mindful that just because we’re reducing waste in one area doesn’t necessarily reduce our total environmental impact,” Conti said. 
Nevertheless, the college considers the program a success and is looking for opportunities to further expand its composting program. According to Environmental Health and Safety Officer Bruce Steele, other locations on campus, such as the Cooler, are also ripe for improvement when it comes to composting. 
“There is very little space to manage the solid waste in that facility. At the Cooler, this job will be on each individual who purchases food,” Steele said. 
Steel and Munoz recognize that separating waste will be a change for students, but they believe it is possible.
“People just need to get into the habit of doing it,” Munoz said.

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