Ram Village joins other communities in campus composting program

Ram Village Apartments has joined 13 other communities across campus this semester in a composting program.

Composting allows students to donate their food waste, where it is mixed with mulch to create fertilizer.

Taylor Bates, the Residence Hall Association president, said the composting program started in 2015 and it is a partnership between RHA and Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling.

Other dorms in the program include Cobb, Conner, Hinton James, Manning East and Ehringhaus. Every dorm on South Campus now composts waste.

The program was developed four years ago from a grant provided by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Katherine Bell, the Green Games intern in the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling, said the program was at Ram Village years ago, but ended due to low participation.

In other dorms, students have a higher participation in composting, which is why the program has continued at the other residence halls Bell said.

“This year, the Sustainability Officer, Daniel Wadsworth, he really wanted to have it there again, so he asked us if we can do it, and so we are trying it again this time and we are gonna see if it works,” she said.

Paris Evans, a Ram Village sustainability officer, said Ram Village requested to begin composting again from the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling.

“So I guess we as the sustainability officers attempted to show that interest to the office and they responded,” Evans said.

Wadsworth said Ram Village is a unique situation because everyone has their own kitchen and not too many students who live there have meal plans.

“We thought it would be very advantageous for Rams Village to have compost from an environmental prospect,” Wadsworth said.

He said students can compost food waste every day. That food waste could be anything from onion skin to coffee grounds.

Bates said if students want to compost, they can check out a composting bin, which has an informational card inside of it to tell people what is compostable. Students can keep these bins until they move out.

“People come every Monday and Wednesday,” Bell said. “They pick up the compost.”

Wadsworth said there are compost bins at all four dumpster areas around Ram Village.

“That’s a big deal for Ram Village because most communities only have one compost bin for their community,” Wadsworth said. “But since Ram Village is so spread out and they really want us to use composting, they gave us four.”

The composting program is managed by the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling, but it was previously managed by the Carolina Campus Community Garden.

Claire Lorch, a garden manager of the Carolina Campus Community Garden, said the compost donations from most of the campus, like residence halls and dining halls, goes to Brooks Compost in Goldsboro.

Sarah Wright, a student garden co-manager, said Brooks Compost is an industrial composter, so their compost piles can get larger and hotter.

“We aren’t capable of handling that much,” Wright said.

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