NC State has a variety of programs designed to reduce its environmental impact, from the annual Tri-Towers Energy and Water Challenge to the construction of energy-efficient buildings like Talley Student Union. One of the cornerstones of the university’s sustainability goals is the promotion of composting around campus.
Green bins dot several areas within Talley, and composting dumpsters are located near many residence halls. Additionally, as of last semester, compost bins have been introduced into bathrooms of many buildings to dispose of paper towels.
Many returning students have had an opportunity to figure out the composting process, but for first-year students, choosing which items to compost, recycle or trash can be a trying process. However, it’s important for students to attempt to do so. Composted waste ultimately produces fewer tons of greenhouse gases than landfills because it produces little to no methane, which is 25 times more efficient at trapping heat than CO2.
Compost also creates usable fertilizer, which can be spread on crops instead of synthetic fertilizer and requires lots of energy, often including fossil fuels, to produce. This helps plants grow and capture CO2 more efficiently, and the processing produces less carbon overall than other comparable ways of helping plant growth.
Composting paper towels is relatively straightforward in the buildings where this program is implemented, since there’s only one item to be disposed of and only one place to dispose of it. It’s somewhat more confusing in Talley, where containers can be made of paper, plastic, and wood, and the signage doesn’t cover all possible items.
As a brief summary, anything that’s made out of natural materials, like food or paper, is compostable. Plastic in general is not compostable, although it may be able to be recycled. However, some items which look like plastic are compostable, but these are usually labeled explicitly on the item. More detailed information can be found on the recycling website.
When in doubt as to whether something can be composted or recycled, always throw it in the waste-to-landfill bin. Contaminated compost can result in soil contamination, fines and a loss of business from the location that handles NC State’s compost.
Composting goods is especially key now that recycling has become a much more costly proposition for many cities. China used to take a great deal of recyclable material from the U.S., but it has recently changed its policies, leaving us without a place to send this material, which is far more expensive to process into goods than it is to send to a landfill.
Thus the more we compost what we can, the less space must be dedicated to landfills, which improves both our carbon footprint and our physical land-area footprint. For those who are able to afford it, trying to buy food or other items with reusable or compostable packaging — or at least minimal plastic — can help spur demand for research into more ecological materials.
As often is the case, however, big action will likely require the big actors to take part. Consumers and political structures must push corporations to think more fully about their packaging practices. Luckily for us, NC State has made some significant steps in that direction. For that to be most effective, though, we must do our part and send all waste to its appropriate destination. In doing so, we can demonstrate that an institutional effort to expand composting will be fully worth the resources and better advocate for more such efforts in the future.
