火博体育堆肥

The 2 student compost managers host Work Parties on Friday's through the school year. At these work parties, volunteers will help collect blue bins on our 自行车 trailers, turn and aerate foodwaste with shovels, and return the blue bins. 志愿者应该 wear sturdy shoes 那 can get dirty, bring a water bottle, and dress in layers if 外面很冷. 准备手套和工具.

请回复至 compost@basilinfracon.com if you are interested in lending attending a work party or if you want to volunteer 以另一种身份.

公寓住户: Our "backyard style" bin collection system is suited for vegetable waste and eggshells. 我们所做的 indeed take avocado pits, pasta, coffee grounds, pumpkins and squash. 我们所做的 NOT accept meats, cheeses, bones, or biodegradable plastics, as these do not break 在我们的系统中以一种及时的方式下降.

FOR RESIDENCE HALLS, ACADEMIC BUILDINGS, AND CATERED EVENTS: The College partners with an industrial composter who can accept everything included on campus PLUS animal products and compostable products, which is cruicial for Dining 大厅运作及活动. Animal products and compostable wares (often made from paper, sugar, or corn) require higher temperatures than a backyard style bin to break down, remain sanitary, and yield a clean finished compost. 有些堆肥是 拖到 伯利恒,纽约.

估计1人.3 billion tons of food is wasted globally each year, despite the fact 那 6.9亿年 全世界都有粮食不安全问题. Whether food is wasted because it wasn’t sold in stores or was left on one’s plate after dinner, these scraps are destined for landfills, where they will produce methane—a harmful gas to humans and the environment alike. These landfills do not exist in a vacuum, and are frequently located in low-income, BIPOC communities, disproportionately putting marginalized people at risk of the unpleasant 以及垃圾填埋场的有害影响. These communities experience higher levels of heavy traffic, dusty air filled with “noxious odors and toxic gases”, and noise pollution (NCEJN). Methane emissions also contribute to climate change, which disproportionately impacts marginalized communities through “ (a) increase in the exposure of the disadvantaged groups to the adverse effects of climate change; (b) increase in their susceptibility to damage caused by climate change; and (c) decrease in their ability to cope and 从遭受的损失中恢复过来。” (Islam and Winkel, 2017). The effects of climate change also put a much higher burden on developing nations over developed nations, despite the latter contributing to climate change at exponentially 更高的利率. 

Aside from, or in tandem with, reducing food waste, the most effective solution to 这个问题是堆肥. By composting, we are taking wasted food and turning it into nutrient-rich soil 那 can then be used in farms and gardens, rather than sending 把它送到垃圾填埋场. By composting, the water, energy, land, labour, and capital resources 那 were used to make the food are not all lost, but rather repurposed. 这不是 only helps the area where the soil ends up, it also provides a more sustainable solution to waste and lessens the burden on marginalized communities. 

At 火博体育大学, we make composting the easiest it will ever be. 你拥有的一切 to do is put your food waste in the bags we provide for you and take it to the blue bins outside of the laundry rooms—your compost managers take care of the rest. 之前 throwing your food scraps or unused produce in the garbage, remember the effects of 你的行动. In composting, we are fighting for racial justice.

2010–2011

The campus composting program started as a student capstone project. 学生探索 the economic and environmental costs and benefits of a comprehensive, institutional 堆肥系统. The project proposed 那 the the system would collect and compost food scraps, lawn-maintenance byproducts and horse manure from the Skidmore stables. The promising project was later adopted by students. 他们一起写了一份提案 for a pilot program in the Northwoods Village Apartments. 获得批准后， the student leadership team and the Environmental Action Club (EAC) adopted the project and began collecting compost in the spring of 2011.

2011–2012

The first semester of the 火博体育堆肥 collection was successful, but students 知道可以改进. Using feedback from 公寓的居民, student volunteers made several improvements to the compost program. 学生给住院医师 new buckets, offered more educational opportunities about proper composting practices and made changes to make the program more efficient. 再一次，学生们进行了调查 the Northwoods residents to analyze the effectiveness of the program.

2012–2013

The 2012–13 academic year brought many improvements to the 火博体育堆肥 Program. For the first time, Sustainable Skidmore hired two student compost managers. 在那里 was a significant increase in student volunteerism and general awareness of the Skidmore 堆肥 Program with the new student leadership, allowing the program to expand its reach on campus and make improvements to the program. 学生们开始收集堆肥 from apartments with bicycles and trailers, reducing our dependence on fossil-fueled 车辆. The group also partnered with Skidmore 餐饮服务 and began collecting coffee grounds from the dining hall and all three campus cafés.

2013–2016

火博体育堆肥公司继续扩张. 一种新的可生物降解袋计划正在使用 within the Northwoods apartments, helping improve the cleanliness of the program for 公寓的居民. We are also moving beyond simply servicing the Northwoods Village. Now, 火博体育堆肥 offers educational events 那 teach students how to reduce 他们制造的废物量. Although it is important to compost food waste, it is more important to find ways to minimize waste in general. 火博体育堆肥公司做到了 offered food preparation workshops 那 show how to properly cut vegetables so 那 edible parts are not wasted, and how to properly store foods so they last longer.

2016

After many years of planning, 火博体育堆肥 expanded its operation to a larger-scale composting program at a property about 1-mile from campus. 新的更大规模的计划 composts horse manure from our stables, lands and ground debris, and coffee grounds 我们所有的校内餐厅. 在这个站点创建的堆肥被使用 on landscaped beds across campus to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel-based fertilizers. Students are trained to operate the tractor 那 we use manage the material 那 is 送到现场，打开我们的窗户.  我们的校园堆肥计划仍在继续 to manage food waste from our apartment villages.

2017

In 2017, Skidmore launched a pilot composting program in the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall to divert food scraps and surplus food (那 cannot be donated to our local community) 防止进入废物流. After a successful pilot program, we implemented a 2018年夏天的永久项目. 我们目前正在堆肥大约10000个 pounds of food scraps each month thanks to a partnership with Natural Upcycling. 鉴于 access to large scale composting, Environmental Action Club coordinated compost collection at Fun Day 2017, avoiding hundreds of pounds of landfill-bound waste.

2018

For years 餐饮服务 has collected surplus food from the Muray-Aikins Dining Hall and donated it to the local soup kitchen and senior center. 一个学生俱乐部，Feedmore， manages food collection and donation through the academic year. 2018年，它们开始了 weighing weekly food donations, and their inventory suggested 那 over 3,000 of pounds of surplus food were donated through the academic year alone.

2021

The student composting program secured funding for a new member of the team- an electric 自行车! This 自行车 helps our team navigate the hills of Skidmore's campus with compost 拖着.

In the Spring, EAC and the 可持续性 办公室 partnered to pilot composting in Residence Halls, starting with Wiecking Hall alone. 该计划继续扩大 to all other Residences, with one bucket in the 1st floor kitchen of each building.

Sadly our off-campus site was put on hold for the forseeable future with presently insurmountable challenges of imbalanced C:N ratio delaying timely breakdown, water access, and the crushed stone site substrate infiltrating the compost blend.

2022

Starting in 2022, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation 食物捐赠及食物残渣回收法 “需要 businesses and institutions generating an annual average of two tons or more of food waste per week to: Donate excess edible food; and recycle all remaining food scraps if they are within 25 miles of an organics recycler.火博体育开始报道此事 year and expanded collection to post-consumer food scraps in the Dining Hall as well.