Students take out the trash in ACDC

Acacia O'Connor Life Editor

Vassar students are busy people. We’ve got papers to write, classes to attend and barely enough time to squeeze in a meal at All Campus Dining Center (ACDC) as it is. And now we’ve got to spend extra time separating out our trash from our compost?

“There were a few people who didn’t like it, and that’s understandable,” said Nate Kimball ’09, Community Relations Intern for the Sustainability Committee. “It is a big change and I totally sympathize with people but I hope that people will understand the importance of it.”

Kimball is one of the students on the committee that helped implement ACDC’s new composting method, requiring students to throw out their trash and put all compost and dishes on the dish belt. The system was the brainchild of Greenway Environmental, the company that directs the composting facility at the Vassar Farm.

While students may not have realized it, Greenway and ACDC have been composting waste out of the dishroom for several years. However, the company realized that this system was both labor-intensive and inefficient, prompting them to reconsider it.

“What they found last year is that there’s not enough physical room in the dishroom to be separating the trash out,” Kimball said. “It also puts a high burden on the employees and leads to a lot of contamination in the compost.”

Contaminated compost poses direct risks to the environment, as Vassar’s biodegradable waste is taken to the farm to be composted and then potentially used as fertilizer. The facility also has an elaborate runoff system, Kimball added, and if the compost was compromised by waste it could possibly run into the Casperkill watershed. Additionally, all of Vassar’s waste is incinerated—the less waste that is burned, the less smoke that goes into the air we breathe.

Marist College has already adopted the same sorting system, where students seperate their own trash. Their compost is brought to the Vassar Farm as well.

The Sustainability Committee hopes that the new system will encourage students to think about how much waste they are creating and eventually cut down on their waste.

“We hope eventually it’ll become a habitual process,” said Kimball. “It’s really vital to maintaining healthy compost at the College.”