Two U of G students work to eliminate food waste
As part of their final project for their philosophy of the environment class, Shannon Charters and Maia Hoban designed an initiative with the goal of making compost bins on campus more visible and accessible in order to reduce food waste at the University of Guelph. The students have put up signs and maps with the hopes that the compost bins will be used more.
When asked about the value of students knowing where the bins are, Charters said, “Students are interested in [composting], hospitality is interested in [composting], it’s good for students to know because if they know where the bins are then they’re actually going to use them.” Additionally, many students are unaware that there are even composting bins on campus at all, as almost all of them are either out of sight or in secluded areas.
Hoban also explained that “if there are more [compost bins] in plain sight then people will know that composting services are available and will hopefully use them more. There will be less food waste on campus and the more composting there is, the more soil that goes back to the organic farm.”
There are 50 new compost bin locations being proposed for the fall 2018 semester. The sustainability office is hoping that these new compost bins will be installed in more prolific areas, such as Branion Plaza, which gets a lot more traffic in comparison to the hidden locations.
Future improvements that could still be made to reduce waste on campus would be “to build more infrastructure for hospitality services [locations], which is being worked on by the sustainability office right now,” said Hoban. Currently, the UC Food Court uses paper plates and plastic cutlery, which is a huge contributor to waste on campus. The start of the fall 2018 semester should see new compost bins installed as well as lower amounts of food waste produced by U of G.
Email compost@pr.uoguelph.ca to make suggestions on where to add new compost bins.
Photo by Karen K. Tran/The Ontarion