Audrey Wimmer is one of many Portland State student living on campus who has a compost bin in her kitchen but doesn’t know where to take it when it’s full.
“My compost is piled up right now. I haven’t yet brought it anywhere and I’m not sure where I’m going to bring it,” Wimmer said. “I took one handful of compost, mostly jasmine [tea] leaves, and dumped it in the bushes a while ago.”
Audrey Wimmer is one of many Portland State student living on campus who has a compost bin in her kitchen but doesn’t know where to take it when it’s full.
“My compost is piled up right now. I haven’t yet brought it anywhere and I’m not sure where I’m going to bring it,” Wimmer said. “I took one handful of compost, mostly jasmine [tea] leaves, and dumped it in the bushes a while ago.”
In May 2005, PSU began the first phase of a campus composting program that was similar to PortlandComposts!, an initially volunteer-based composting program administered by the city of Portland’s Office of Sustainability that had launched just a few months earlier, in February.
Phase one was a “back-of-house” composting program, where pre-consumer waste would be collected in the kitchens of Smith Memorial Student Union and Food For Thought Café. The second phase was an expansion of that program to the kitchen facility of the Ondine Building.
“We have been composting on various levels for years,” said Kelli Martin, a graduate assistant who works with the PSU Recycles! Program.
PSU faculty composting is no new trend.
Green Teams, which are groups of faculty members who are concerned about sustainability issues, compost regularly in their offices.
“I think the office composting program is great, especially for those who maintain it,” said Timothy Waugh, an executive assistant in the business affairs department at PSU who has been composting at home for the last three years. “The answer for Portland State’s composing program is worms.”
When Waugh says worms, he’s talking about red worms—worms that have especially big appetites for compostable scraps. Red worms essentially break down compostable material into an organic soil.
“I think it’s good for people to see the end result,” Waugh said. “It used to be lettuce, and now it’s this deep, dark, rich earth that smells like a rainforest.”
Student composting programs are a more recent development, but are starting to gain momentum.
“Our most recent success is that this last school year, we rolled out ‘front-of-house’ composting for the first time,” Martin said.
The first user interface compost station at PSU is in the Viking Food Court. The compost station in the Viking Food Court offers students the choice of discarding their food scraps in a well-marked compost bin or the trash can, which has been relabeled “landfill.”
“I think if it’s there, people are generally going to use it, and if it’s not there people are going to throw [compostable material] in the garbage,” said Amoris Walker, a PSU student living off campus. Walker meticulously scrapped the remainder of her lunch into the compost bin in the Viking food court. “I think a combination of education and marketing will increase the amount of students composting.”
“We fall short in composting endeavors. It’s slow and steady getting people to jump on board. It’s not a perfect science yet,” Martin said. “Where we fall short is definitely in residential halls.”
The city of Portland has recently announced a new curbside compost collection program that will take effect Oct. 31. The new program will supply single-family homes in residential Portland neighborhoods with a kitchen compost pile that Portlanders will fill with their compostable scraps.
“There are a lot of folks that are excited about composting,” said Airanne Sperry, the Portland Recycles! coordinator. “They’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
The Environmental Club, a student club on campus, is dedicated to instituting new progressive composting policies on campus.
“We think that the current composting program is okay,” said Kirk Rea, the Environmental Club coordinator. “But we would like to see it be more accessible to various buildings on campus, including dormitories.”
Currently there is no similar residential composting program on PSU’s campus, and students living on campus shouldn’t expect one anytime soon. “Portland trends don’t always mimic our trends in housing,” said Christina Shafer, the assistant director for Residential Education.
“PSU’s mission statement and motto tell me that we want to be supportive and influence our community, region, city and state,” Rea said. “Within our communities we’ve decided that managing our waste to have less environmental impact is a good thing, so why isn’t PSU investing more in those practices?”
Shafer said that students who are interested in composting have options when the time comes to discard of their compostable scraps: the compost bins on campus and in the Ondine lobby in particular. Shafer also suggested contacting the Resident Hall Association, which coordinates some composting options on campus.
“I think that until we hit a critical mass with numbers [of students looking for composting], we will still stick to the current solution,” Shafer said.
Rea suggests that the student interest is out there and needs to be recognized. “Maybe the student interest isn’t overwhelming right now, but there definitely is student interest within the dorms to have a student program,” Rea said.
One problem with the current residential composting situation is the lack of education regarding student composting options.
“I don’t think most people know about it,” Wimmer said. “Even my roommate, who’s from Oregon, doesn’t know how to recycle. People need a lot of instruction.”
“Issuing literature is not on our tabletop of priorities,” Shafer said. “One, because there haven’t been many students that have voiced interest, and two, because handing out pamphlets would be counterproductive within the sustainability if they didn’t go to good use.”
Rea recognizes that literature might be counterproductive at first, but said that in the long run, it would create a huge impact on the bigger picture.
“Ideally we would see a demand from students—people calling the sustainability office, or a student petition,” Martin said. “That would be empowering for the students and would make a case to housing and facilities, and to us. I think that would increase the success rate of the program.”
“We’re students, with our classes and our homework we also have to work, and at times commute,” Rea said. “It’s hard to voice our opinions on sustainable practicing due to our sparse energy and time.”
Currently, residential students who need places to dispose of their compost can bring their scraps to a compost bin that’s open to the public in the alleyway between the University Services Building and the Koinonia House. Students can also utilize one of the nearby campus composting facilities or contact the RHA.
