Striving for zero waste

Thirty thousand people shuffle in and out of the UW's Housing and Food Services' (HFS) many dining facilities each day, likely unaware of where their food waste ends up after it's dropped into the compost bin. Once an old apple core or pizza slice leaves someone's hands, it's picked up by a truck from Cedar Grove, self-proclaimed as "Pacific Northwest's leading organic recycling company," which for the last several years has been tasked with finding a place for all of the UW's food waste. "[The] UW's tonnage is a pretty big chunk," Susan Thoman, Cedar Grove's director of business development, said. The UW ships about 1,017 tons of food waste a year to Cedar Grove's processing facility in Everett, where the waste enters an eight-week process Thoman refers to as "highly technical and highly controlled." During this time period, the waste is broken down into compost, a nutrient-rich material that is used as both a fertilizer and soil amendment allowing for new food production. Beginning in 1989, Cedar Grove's composting program has diverted more than four million tons of organic material from landfills. This diversion rate, they said, prevents the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as removing about 670,000 cars from the road. "Students should really appreciate what they're doing because they're not shipping [their waste] hundreds of miles away to a landfill where we'll never get it back for any useful purpose," Thoman said. "When you can grow food from material that would totally be wasted, minimize chemical and water use and build better soils in depleted urban environments, there's just no better model than that." Throughout the year, members of Students Expressing Environmental Dedication (SEED) will station themselves around waste stations and help residents sort the remains of their meals into garbage, compost and recycling bins. "We understand that composting is confusing," Krysta Yousoufian, UW senior and associate director of SEED, said. "Our intent is to provide friendly support, not to intimidate students." In December of 2006, members of SEED brought to the attention of HFS the large amount of waste it was sending to a landfill located all the way in northern Oregon. Responding to this student concern, the UW pioneered a campus-wide composting program that continues to expand, improve and influence neighboring schools and communities. "All this work that we're doing is not only making things more sustainable at the UW, but also creating this path for others to follow down," Yousoufian said. "We are increasing composting on a large-scale, much broader than the UW." Prior to Earth Day in 2010, the UW held a "Trash-In," where the UW's Recycling & Solid Waste Program received one day's worth of "trash" - approximately 1,000 pounds - from seven campus buildings and sorted it into five categories. "Nobody sorts trash," Alex Credgington, UW's Recyling & Solid Waste Progam's communication manager, said. "If it goes in the trash it goes to the landfill down in Oregon." Of the trash, 42 percent was compostable and 21 percent was recyclable, indicating that despite the Recycling & Solid Waste Program's success, room for improvement still remains. "We're having lots of success and we continue to grow, but there is still opportunity to be better," Credgington said. SEED continues to work on education and outreach to fellow students, along with pushing toward changes in structural practices that will make composting more widely available on campus. "Sustainability, like anything else new, is a step-by-step process of learning and changing your behavior," Michael Meyering, HFS project and sustainability manager, said. Meyering hopes that the UW's future budget will allow for sorting stations with compost all over campus, indicating that if all students participated in composting, only a small amount of landfill waste would remain. "We're doing a big paradigm shift. People are used to taking one-time-use disposable materials and throwing them in the trash; they get in a hurry and don't realize how important it is to take those extra five seconds," Thoman said. If every UW student took those "extra five seconds," Thoman said it could make a huge difference and the UW could make an even larger impact in the fight for sustainability. "Cedar Grove is here because of you," Thoman said. "People in the community created this model and allow us to do this." Reporter Lucas Anderson contributed to this story. Reach reporters Rebecca Gross and Lucas Anderson at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.

Striving for zero waste

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