New composting program cuts landfill needs
Signs help students differentiate between receptacles, university pays more to be environmentally-friendly
Janie Boschma
Issue date: 2/12/09 Section: Campus News
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A partnership between University Centers administration, Blugold Dining and such student groups as the Foodlums and the Conservationists has placed 10 composting bins in upper and lower campus cafeterias and food courts.
For the first few days, student volunteers and staff members hovered nearby the new bins to explain which items to compost, but now students are on their own, said Paula Stuettgen, a University Centers coordinator.
Freshmen Megan Schindeldecker and Hannah Gytri said they appreciate the signs above bins indicating exactly what's compostable.
All of the serving ware - from the plates, to the cups, cutlery and drinking straws - are compostable, as well as any food scraps.
"It's not that hard to separate your stuff …," Gytri said, adding it seems most students have been catching on. "Every time I go to put something in, it seems pretty full."
UW-Eau Claire is the first commercial composting site in Eau Claire, said Christian Wise, Blugold Dining's general manager. Composting is a growing trend among other Wisconsin universities, many of which Campus Sustainability Fellow Kate Hale said are in various stages of implementing their own programs.
Students usually go through more than 5,000 cups each day, Wise said. That's about 35,000 a week, and with 32 weeks in an academic year, that's more than one million cups a year. Before this semester, Blugold Dining offered Styrofoam cups that Wise said take at least 100 years, sometimes 130, to fully decompose. Wise said the corn cups' manufacturer, Sysco, claim the new cups biodegrade within a week.
"If you had two weeks of space to have your landfill, then that would be all you'd really need - as opposed to 120 years worth of landfill," Wise said. "There's a little bit of a difference there."
Stuettgen said since the university is paying extra to use biodegradable serving wear, everyone should at least make the effort to compost.
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