Keeping in stride with the green mission of the first-year campus, the Composting at the Commons project has been recycling organic matter since October of 2007.
The Commons composting effort, which is a part of Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Recycling, focuses on biodegradable organic matter, such as fruits, vegetables and coffee. All of the materials are taken from the Commons Dining Center or the Common Grounds Coffee Shop. Senior Luke Boehne heads the project with the help of sophomore Liwei Jiang and seven volunteers who all regularly gather food scraps in five-gallon buckets from the Commons, add the scraps to 3-by-3-by-3 compost bins and spend roughly 45 minutes a week turning the compost soil.
"Composting is one approach to the social justice movement," said Boehne, "because composting is fundamentally natural, creates fertile topsoil and solves the food waste issue, especially in restaurants. Composting is also easy enough to do at home but easily done on a municipal level."
Composting is environmentally attractive because it prevents carbon and nitrogen-rich materials from ending up in a landfill where they will not decompose because oxygen cannot reach the material. Also, non-decomposed matter creates methane gas, which is 10 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Additionally, according to Vanderbilt's Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Hackett, composting is also economically attractive because it reduces the cost required to put items in a landfill, as well as decreases fertilizer costs.
For now, the Commons is the pilot site for the project, and Boehne wishes to see its expansion. Currently, members of SPEAR are putting together a preliminary proposal for a 15-by-15 rooftop garden on either Branscomb or Sarratt.
"We are hoping to use Rand kitchen scraps which would require a compost site in conjunction with Rand," says Boehne.
According to president of SPEAR and senior Brent Fitzgerald, this project is unique to campus because instead of solely advocating reform, the composting project essentially practices what it preaches. "We proposed an idea and get to see it to completion. Instead of spending money to bring in a guest speaker who comes for a day, we have created a perpetual educating tool and a perpetual tool to combat global warming," said Fitzgerald.
