Happy ICAW to all! This week (May 1-7) is International Compost Awareness Week. The week-long educational event is hosted by the US Composting Council, who since 1999 have promoted biodegradable waste approaches through ICAW events and initiatives. This year’s theme is Compost: The Soil and Water Connection. The theme brings composting back to its roots (pardon the pun) by reminding us that despite amazing new technologies, composting is inevitably about taking some of the most fundamental, natural processes out there and putting them to use in our waste systems once again.

Well wait, let’s take a step back – why even compost to begin with?
This year’s ICAW poster was designed by Yessi Budisari, a Western Indonesian artist, who was inspired to act by a brush fire and smoke pollution disaster in Indonesia that degraded the soil quality of the area and threatened the local water supply. Her story connects back to the environmental – and therefore, social and economic – benefits of composting. In addition to minimizing greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, compost can play a key role in revitalizing brownfields, managing stormwater runoff and erosion, and stabilizing soil for infrastructure and agriculture. And in turn, each of these benefits leads to a more just, profitable, and sustainable future.

So all in all, composting is good for us and good for the planet. Then what is NYU doing to get in on the action?

Composting at NYU is limited to dining halls*, where food scraps – which make up the majority of all organic waste on campus – are the primary type of waste being disposed. Compost from NYU dining halls is collected and shipped upstate by Action Carting, where it’s processed and reintroduced to the natural cycle. Currently, NYU diverts 30% of our waste from landfill – which means it’s either composted or recycled. But if we were to send every bit of organic waste to be composted, that would make up 60% of our entire waste stream! With recycling, that would mean sending only a tiny percentage of waste to landfill.

So why haven’t we reached that 60% yet?

First and foremost, composting is expensive: the monetary costs of processing compost are still high compared to sending organics to landfill, because our system’s waste infrastructure is still so tailored to landfilling. Making that transition will take a bit of an investment, but will be well worth it in the long run. There’s also the issue of the purity of the stream – that is, making sure that bags of compost aren’t contaminated by plastic bottles or other non-compostable materials is tricky, especially at a place like NYU where everyone believes something slightly different about how their trash should be sorted out (or maybe just don’t give it much thought).

All things considered, NYU is working to improve and expand its composting initiatives, to better support a sustainable system here on campus. Check out our submission to Gov. Cuomo’s REV Energy to lead competition, which focuses on a new means of sustainably processing our organic waste at NYU. Check in with our ECO Reps, who are working on ways to make NYU’s garbage habits a bit greener with projects in their residence halls. And keep an eye out for our next blog post, about one student initiative to improve the world of waste at NYU and beyond. Here’s to a great ICAW!

*With the exception of small-scale composting initiatives in CAS’s Silver Academic Center and elsewhere on campus – check out our next post for more info!