Composting is just one method to help preserve and protect the environment, but it is a method many students rarely take part in. Knowing this, several students decided to host a week-long event called "Weigh Your Waste Week", which took place at Sherman Dining Hall during dinner time from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. every day from Monday, March 31 to Thursday, April 3.
The week is a partnership between the Eco-Reps and the Senate Sustainability Committee. The premise of Weigh Your Waste Week centers on composting, the process of decomposing wastes, particularly food waste, into soil and fertilizer. The goal of the project was both to educate students about composting as well as motivate students to produce less waste. "We still want to make students aware and try to reduce waste," Deanna Heller '15 said.
The week is Heller's project through the Eco-Reps program. Eco-Reps are a group of paid students hired by Brandeis Facilities to promote and coordinate campus sustainability improvements. Heller is part of an Eco-Rep program called Green Corps, a program in which students work 10 hours a week to implement a specific sustainability project of their choice.
Initial plans for this project began when Heller and student representative for Sodexo and Chair of the Senate Sustainability Committee Anna Bessendorf '15 collaborated after finding out about the impending changes in the composting system. The duo also teamed up with registered campus dietician Kate Moran as well as student volunteers from Students for Environmental Action and Green Corps.
Waste Week volunteers set up a table in Sherman with containers to collect people's waste and a scale to weigh their refuse in pounds. The table supervisors requested that diners dump all that was remaining on their dinner plates, including napkins, into the waste bins to be weighed.
The project coincides with the University's recent switch to Casella, Brandeis' new waste disposal company. They emerged on campus this semester. With Casella as our full-time waste contractor, the University is able to manage food waste through composting on a comprehensive scale.
So far, according to Heller, "Casella has started composting in the kitchens" and in the future, there are plans to expand this system throughout campus." Casella has the intetnion of expanding to include dining locations on campus and residence halls.
Previously, any composted waste from Usdan Student Center and Sherman has traditionally gone to the WeCare commercial composting site in Marlborough, Mass. The food wastes collected from Weigh Your Waste Week will instead now be going to smaller farm-based facilities. The waste from the week will be going to Brick Ends Farm in South Hamilton, Mass.
At these compost sites, the waste is sorted and composted, and since the facilities are larger, meat and dairy products may be composted as well. This is usually not possible at a smaller home or private composting system.
This switch of waste disposal providers coincides with a statute passed recently by Massachusetts requiring all cafeterias and dining halls of a certain size to implement a compost system. The statute will go into effect in July. They were using the "Weigh Your Waste Week" to "test the waters," Bessendorf said.
Elizabeth Casella, Waste Systems business development manager stated in an email to the Justice that logically, Rocky Hill is preferable to the WeCare facility. "Rocky Hill is a farm based site that creates high quality compost that can be applied to fields for the growth of produce, used as a soil amendment, turf dressing, erosion control or potted plants," she wrote.
Because of the new statute, the Campus Sustainability Initiative at Brandeis will also be implementing a new three-bin system. The three bins will be for trash, compost and recycling and will have different colors to designate each kind. "The system will standardize what happens with waste throughout campus," Heller said.
The total weight of the waste collected on Monday, March 31 amounted to 51.1 pounds, 8.5 pounds on Tuesday for half an hour, 33.7 pounds on Wednesday and 58.6 pounds on Thursday.
Heller noted that part of the project's success stemmed from strong student response. "Many students who saw the compost table the night before and how much food was being wasted decided to reduce their food waste the following night," Heller said.
Haley Orlofsky '14, a student who helped supervise the table, witnessed a similar student response. "People ask what it is and once they know more about it, they appreciate it," she said.
For Heller, the project works toward more than one goal. "I am very passionate about this because it is very multi-layered," she said. It's not just about saving the planet, there are people starving and here we are wasting so much food."
Heller noted that composting was part of her upbringing. "Compost makes sense, to use waste to make food rather than just dumping it in a landfill," she said. "The fundamental reality is that we all share this planet with other people."