Students gathered in Norris University Center for NU’s first Compost Fair on Thursday to learn composting methods promoting campus-wide food sustainability.
The event featured composting-themed desserts, an appearance from Willie the Wildcat, a waste sorting basketball game, a DJ performance, a station to plant succulent plants and decorate pots, a Spin2Win trivia game and trivia prizes.
Representatives from the Associated Student Government Sustainability Committee also held a booth to educate students on the important difference between composting and recycling.
“I am really interested in pro-environmental activities, and what really stood out to me was the importance of composting and recycling, especially here on campus,” Communication freshman Luca Insfran said. “I don’t think a lot of people are super aware of what goes into which bin, and being able to know what goes where is very helpful.”
In October, the University rolled out compost bins to Norris for diners, referred to as customer-facing composting. Each bin is part of a trio of units, with the other two units sectioned for recycling and trash.
Staff in dining halls and kitchens on campus have composted — known as back-of-house composting — for a number of years to streamline the process, according to Julie Cahillane, NU’s associate director of sustainability. Introducing the new compost bins also required her team to reevaluate the utensils and containers offered by Norris dining locations.
“You have a whole different set of challenges when you want to do it customer-facing,” she said. “We spent a lot of time looking at all the serving wares used in Norris, trying to make sure that as many of them as possible were compostable or recyclable to make the sorting and collection of the compostable items easier.”
Krista Brown is the sustainability and community engagement manager with Compass Group USA, the contracted food service provider at NU. She said that, in the past, customer-facing composting has been tested on Northwestern’s campus. However, the initiative ran into several issues, including inadequate packaging, supply chain problems, misuse leading to contamination and a simple lack of enough compost generated.
Since the launch of the new composting bins, Brown said she has been aiming for a large-scale event to highlight the new effort and increase awareness about proper composting practices. Brown began organizing and finalizing logistics for the Compost Fair alongside the NU Dining team, sustainNU and the Norris Center team in December.
“(The goal is) to educate and engage our Norris guests about the new composting program in a fun way so that we can ensure customer-facing compost continues in the space,” she said. “We can only have a 1% contamination rate in the compost with the University’s waste hauler, so it’s critical that waste is sorted properly to keep the program active as intended.”
The event helped also clear up students’ composting questions.
“I think it brought more awareness to certain food items I would have thought would go on landfill, (that actually) goes on composting,” Weinberg freshman Paula Fregene. “It made me more aware of composting and why I should compost.”
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