Starting in the spring, students in some dorms will be able to use composting bins as part of an initiative to decrease the university’s environmental impact.
The Student Government Association and the Residence Hall Association both have passed resolutions this semester in support of implementing a composting program in dorms. Now, representatives from the RHA’s Resident Facilities Advisory Board and the Department of Residential Facilities are planning to create a pilot program sometime after spring break.
Judy Baho, chairwoman of the RHA Sustainability Committee, presented the RHA with the resolution during a senate meeting Nov. 18. The RHA unanimously supported the resolution.
“The important thing that people should know is that a lot of things we throw away are compostable,” said Baho, a sophomore government and politics major. “It’s just a drain on resources because those things just end up in the waste stream.”
Baho said it’s important for students to understand that composting can reduce impact on the environment. She said she hopes they can take the sustainability tips they’ve learned while at this university and bring them home to make a positive change in their daily lives.
The initial step in the process is to find out how much compostable material is in the dorm’s waste stream right now, said Maria Lonsbury, RHA’s sustainability committee faculty adviser and a project specialist in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs.
A company has been hired to do a waste stream analysis sometime during the first two weeks of December, Lonsbury said, to sort through the trash from some of the dorms.
“Then, we will be able to know what we’re really talking about and be able to move forward,” she said.
The company will observe waste practices in different types of dorms that are representative of halls across the campus, said Zach Boyles, Resident Facilities Advisory Board chairman. Hagerstown, Oakland, Baltimore and Anne Arundel halls are in consideration for the analysis.
A previous waste stream audit for this university, done by SGS Engineers in 2008, found that about 25 percent of waste coming from dorms was compostable.
Department of Resident Facilities Director Jon Dooley said the goal will be to start a pilot in one or two of the of the residence halls to see how it works and gauge the need for new containers.
RHA looks to start small, Boyles said. The RHA resolution calls for the composting of only paper towels, though ultimately, members look to include all compostable items in the plan.
Sophomore environmental science and policy major Annie Rice worked on securing the SGA’s support of the composting program and said the next crucial step is education.
“We are providing students the opportunity to dispose of their waste in new ways, now we have to focus on teaching them how to properly separate their waste and why it’s important,” Rice said. “For example, all of these to-go containers from the diners, those are compostable. But students are just going back to their dorms and throwing them away.”
Rice said it’s an ongoing effort to educate students on how to properly recycle. Composting, she said, will be a new issue to face. She said the SGA and RHA sustainability committees will continue to work together to figure out ways to spread the message.
“What we wanted to do is create something like the recycling posters on top of every recycling bin around campus,” Baho said. “We wanted to make posters like that for what can and can’t be composted. That’s one idea, and we’ll be talking about more outreach in committee meetings.”
SGA Director of Sustainability Ori Gutin said the move to a composting program in dorms would bring the university closer toward becoming a zero-waste campus.
“It forces students to think more consciously about the products they’re throwing away, and where it goes once it leaves their hands,” said Gutin, a junior environmental science and policy major. “It is a very real and tangible way to integrate sustainability into the lives of all students.”
