At the start of the year, the garden club launched the new composting program, installing trash cans in the café divided into four sections—liquids, green waste, recycling, and trash. Now, when students go to throw away their trash after lunch, they have noticed that the liquids and green waste slots are gone. However, the composting program is still going on.

With the uproar from students that ensued after the premier of the new trash cans, the contribution of compostables from students was miniscule compared to that of the kitchen.

“The decision to do this made good sense to the Garden Club as only about 5-7 pounds of compostables were collected each day from the Café.  In contrast, an average of 25 pounds of pre-consumer green waste is collected each day from the kitchen,” said Brooke Moore, Student and Community Garden Club Coordinator.

However, the composting program is still going strong, and the garden club continues to work behind the scenes to responsibly use their resources and improve the quality of the gardens.

“To date, the Garden Club, in conjunction with Campus Cuisine, has composted over 3,000 pounds of green waste since August, 2013. In other words, 1.5 tons of green waste has been composted and put back into the gardens at Westminster,” said Moore.

There are many benefits to composting as the garden club practices being good stewards of what has been given to them.

“In the process of composting, WCA’s carbon footprint is reduced, its waste stream is reduced, the soil is enhanced, plants receive better nourishment (compost is nitrogen rich). and better quality vegetables are harvested for use in the school lunches!” said Moore.