Composting Rates on the Rise

By Samantha Juda

What would you do with 561 bananas? 

 

After you eat one or two, you put the peel in the Benson Memorial Center compost bin. You may think that peel is done at Santa Clara, but little do you know that the peel - along with the rest of the waste from Santa Clara - is tracked and charted as part of the campus' sustainability efforts. 

 

The school generated 97,328 pounds of compost in September of this year. That's 18 pounds of compostable waste per undergraduate student, or 3,244 banana peels, equaling roughly 561 banana peels per person. That's a lot of potassium for one month. 

 

In 2011, five percent of the total waste was diverted to compost, while in 2012, 28 percent has been diverted already - which is only accounting for the three-quarters of the year that has passed. The increase in composting also decreases landfill rates significantly. For example, Santa Clara landfill totals weighed 179,030 pounds in September 2011, and a mere 6,656 pounds in September 2012.

 

All food waste, garden trimmings, bioware to-go plates and utensils, and paper towels can be composted on campus. 

Although there is no way to know exactly why rates have increased, Mimi Sanicola, the waste diversion intern at the Office of Sustainability, believes that compost rates have increased this year for three main reasons; composting of yard waste, improved systems in Benson, and an institutional "culture of composting."

 

The gardening staff is now composting yard waste, which is helping increase compost rates. For the past 10-12 years the yard waste from on-campus gardening has been taken off-site to be used as alternate daily cover in landfills, or broken down to be used as mulching for on-campus landscaping.

 

Although this counted as diverted waste, according to Lindsey Cromwell Kalkbrenner, sustainability director at the Office of Sustainability, "it was a gray area, and one that we couldn't wholeheartedly count as being composted, so when our landscaping waste began being hauled to a commercial composting company, we were satisfied that it would go through the process to be broken down and be used as soil." 

 

In addition, composting in Benson has become more efficient. 

Melissa Reynen, the dining services marketing manager feels that composting efforts have improved both in the kitchen efficiency and in student behavior by placing bins with uniform signage in convenient locations while preparing, serving, and consuming food. 

 

"Now we can all use the same signs and I think that is where a lot of our progress has been made when it comes to dining on campus," said Reynen about the student initiatives composting in Benson.  

 

It officially started campus-wide in fall 2009 - when all the current seniors were freshmen. The program has grown, now including most residence halls and even Malley Fitness and Recreation Center. The Office of Sustainability works to make all composting efforts uniform to avoid confusion by placing bins and signs with photo descriptions of what should go in each bin, campus-wide. 

 

"This is the first year every person on campus, since day one, has been exposed to composting," said Sanicola. "It's really hard to make behavior changes when say, somebody is a senior and we just put composting in because it's new and confusing," 

 

This year all students have had composting options in Benson and even their residence halls for their entire Santa Clara career - which Sanicola believes is adding to the high number of waste diversion this year.

 

Cara Uy, the new Sustainability Coordinator, who started working in the Office of Sustainability as an intern, agrees that the program has a higher profile on campus and hopes to have even more promotion of waste categorization to the student body with the start of the pilot Compost Buck'et Program, which will test personal compost bins with 100 on-campus residents to see how effective they would be overall. 

 

In addition to changes in student behavior in Benson and around campus, there have also been changes institutionally. 

"Now we are seeing kind of institutional changes, or more of a culture of sustainability," added Sanicola, especially with the new Coca-Cola contract, which required the company to supply the school with three-part compostable to-go cups, including the lids and straws. 

 

In the old contract with Pepsi, the to-go cup was neither compostable nor recyclable until Associated Student Government helped push a petition to Pepsi Co. for compostable cups in 2011. 

 

"I think (The Office of Sustainability has) been working really hard on improving signage and getting the message out," said environmental studies and sciences Adjunct Lecturer Stephanie Hughes, who teaches a course titled The Joy of Garbage. 

 

"You are not having to compost one thing and throw the other or recycle the other part," said Hughes. "Because who's going to (sort the components of their cup) other than us really geeky 'crunchy' people?" 

 

Making sure to place recycling, compost, and landfill waste in correct bins avoids contamination  which causes entire bins to go tolandfill.  

 

As the year continues, the waste diversion team will weigh landfill, compost and recycling bins. 

 

Make sure to put your banana peels in the green bins. 

 

Contact Samantha Juda at sjuda@scu.edu or 

call (408) 554-4948.