Compost program worth the money
Written by Endeavour staff Thursday, 06 October 2011 09:18
Lethbridge College goes through an estimated 55 kilograms of compostable material per week, which works out to be around 1451 kilograms of material per year.
Those numbers are based on the vegetable trim and edible waste from cooking classes only and don’t include glass or tin.
Chef Doug Overes, culinary instructor at the college,
has been trying without success for about 14 years to bring a change to the way
we recycle on campus.
The way people look at changing the way we throw away
our garbage draws two main questions: who is going to pick up the extra work
and who is going to pay for it.
Currently Overes takes recyclable material from the
college to dispose of properly about three times per week. While at home Overes
throws away about a Safeway bag of garbage once every three weeks. He has also
been advocating for a meeting with the LCSA to conduct a presentation to raise
awareness for this cause.
The presentation would contain pertinent information
such as fiscal responsibility, where will it will go, who will do the work and which
groups are able to help us get started.
The problem with wanting change is there is always
advocacy for it, but sometimes just not a lot of support for the financial
aspect of it.
“We have a lot of green initiatives,” says Gwen Wirth,
communications specialist at the college.
While there have been some small changes made around
campus, such as biodegradable bowls, plates, cutlery and garbage bags for our
cafeteria, proper recycling remains an up-hill battle for this campus.
If the college were to implement a proper recycling
program it would mean more work and definitely more money. However, it would
reduce the amount of garbage receptacles on campus by about half, not to
mention reducing the amount of edible material being thrown away.
SAIT in Calgary, which has both a larger campus and
population, have been able to introduce a green house in addition to their
recycling efforts.
The biodegradable supplies we use are a start, but
there is more we could be doing to help with the transition. The problem with
shaking the tree is that when apples fall someone is going to want to be paid
for them.
If the college were to transition from one to three
bins, the three bins would consist of one for compostable or edible material,
one for glass/plastic and tin and the third for material that can’t go in
either of the first two.
