With the ban of plastic water bottle sales, the sourcing of local food in the cafeteria and a campus recycling program, the University of Winnipeg is consciously striving towards environmental sustainability. And as the compost program on campus continues to gain momentum, the university will further reduce its environmental footprint.

Compost bins made their debut on campus in August 2007.

Kisti Thomas, materials conservation co-ordinator at the University of Winnipeg, said the program got off to a slow start.

“There were a lot of problems because if you just stick out compost bins and you don’t show people how to compost … then everything is contaminated because people didn’t know what to put in it,” she said.

Thomas said a compost bin becomes contaminated when it contains too many non-compostable items. When this happens, the entire contents of the bin cannot be composted.

In its second year, the program began to progress due to a greater emphasis on educating students around what is and what is not compostable. From April 2008 to March 2009 the university composted 11.1 tonnes of materials – a drastic improvement over the 1.5 tonnes of materials composted the previous year.

Thomas is pleased with last year’s outcome, though she said there is still room for improvement.

“I can say that the compost bins are still being contaminated,” she said, adding that many students may still be confused around what constitutes a compostable item.

She pointed out that although the coffee cups distributed by Diversity Food Services are compostable, coffee cups from off-campus locations, like Starbucks, are not.

“If you are not sure, put it in the garbage because at least the rest [of the bin’s contents] can be composted,” she said.

But for some students the issue with composting is simply one of awareness.

Grace Bowness, a third-year English major at the U of W, said many students don’t even realize there are composting bins on campus.

“They don’t seem to be advertised so students are kind of left in the dark,” she said, adding that since the bins are not well marked, students may mistake them for garbage bins and throw the wrong materials in them.

 

Geoff Scott, professor of geography at the U of W, agreed with Bowness that composting on campus should be better advertised.

Scott, who has studied soil in several countries, stressed the importance of students making use of the compost bins.

“For the students here on campus, it should be part of everyday life,” he said, adding that composting organic matter returns nutrients to the soil, enriching it immensely.

In addition to soil enrichment, which benefits food production, composting reduces methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that is produced when food waste breaks down in landfills.

Thomas hopes that U of W’s composting efforts will inspire others to embrace composting as well.

“The community looks to the university to set an example of what they should be doing,” she said, adding that the U of W is currently the only post-secondary institution in Manitoba with a composting program.

Published in Volume 64, Number 4 of The Uniter (September 24, 2009)