So let’s say you’ve got the recycling thing down like old hat – have you tried composting?
Up until my experience at North Carolina State, the answer was unabashedly no for me. I viewed composting as something best left to the stinky spot on what we affectionately referred to as the “sewage plant road” in my hometown of hickory nc. It’s the location where we rolled up our windows, turned off our air conditioning; the powers that be in hickory had decided to place a sewage plant and a compost plant adjacent to each other producing a smell of poo commingled with rotting food – delicious!
At NC State, we started doing composting in my 2nd year at our events. We had an arrangement with a composting plant that would haul off our composted materials when we had filled up a dumpster. Our responsibility was to make sure that our compost materials were not mixed with our non-compostable materials. Here was the basic process that went into that:
1) purchase compostable items: plates, cups, silverware – obviously the food would be compostable as well
2) people had to watch the trash cans to make sure that other trash was not thrown in with the compost materials – any contamination could hurt the compost mixture
In the large scope of things, this is NOT THAT HARD. If you’re doing an event that involves food with paper or plastic plates and spoons, it’s easy to accomodate composting into your event.
One of the gold standards of composting is Vanderbilt which, from their new Commons facility, does extensive composting of their food from dining http://www.vanderbilt.edu/sustainvu/pdf/compost_center_3.pdf.
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