Good evening compost subscribers,
We need your help!
If you are on campus or even following along from afar, we would love to hear any thoughts you might have for re-imaging the resource recovery station in the campus center where we receive some of our uneaten food.
Currently our system is only accepting pre-consumer kitchen scraps and leftover food from Frist Campus Center, but it would also be great if we can capture and divert post-consumer food scraps.
How should the new area and compost bin be designed so that they simultaneously limit contamination while educating the campus community and visitors about our food scraps composting project? Let us know your thoughts!
[The current layout and design of the Frist Gallery post-consumer compost bin contributes to contamination of the stream as shown above in which non-compostable materials such as a soda cup with a plastic lid and straw were thrown into the bin]
Weekly Data: 2/25 – 3/1
We continued to load roughly 3,000 lbs. of food scraps and off-loaded a similar amount in compost.
[Besides these few pieces, most of the cardboard pizza boxes that we processed last week have composted successfully inside of the system.]
| Food | Wood shavings (BA/CS) | % BA/CS |
Compost Off-loaded | |
| Week Totals (lbs.) | 3,098 | 1,013 | 33% | 3,000 |
| CUMULATIVE (lbs) | 55,734 | 16,952 | 30% | 44,500 |
I absolutely love the blog, Gina. Please don’t ever stop with the updates!
Avid subscriber since the beginning here tuning in from Ireland — here is my suggestion.
Put a lid over the compost one or somehow make it more challenging to access than the trash bins. That extra step will make people who are just looking to toss into the easiest container choose somewhere else. Probably worth the slight discouragement that those who are interested in composting might feel.
Thanks for following along, Quinton! And good suggestion too! We agree that quality > quantity of the stream.
Best,
Gina ’15