Monday, June 7, 2010

COLGATE STAFF AND ALUMNI LEND A HELPING HAND IN COMPOSTING

by Meghan Kiernan '11


Colgate would like to thank participating alumni and organizers for the overwhelming success of Friday’s “Green Day” BBQ lunch during Reunion 2010. During this lunch, approximately 80 lbs of food scraps were diverted from the landfill to be composted on campus! This was the first major event at Colgate where composting food scraps was possible. Colgate staff and alumni were enthusiastically supportive of this effort and everyone did their part by scraping their fruit and vegetable scraps into the designated composting bins.








The food scraps will compost over the summer. The finished compost will be used at Colgate’s new organic vegetable garden to help grow vegetables for next year. The success of Friday's BBQ illustrates that Colgate is capable of composting which has promising implications for the future: helping to close the food loop while driving down landfill tipping costs when operated on a larger scale. Additionally, diverting food scraps from the landfill also prevented over 96 lbs of greenhouse gas emissions from entering our atmosphere.

Colgate’s recycling initiative was also on display as each trash can was accompanied by recycling and composting bins. Signs helped to instruct alumni for easier, more efficient sorting.





We would love to hear your feedback. Please let us know if you have any ideas that we can implement in future years to advance our continued commitment to sustainability at Colgate.

Again, thank you to everyone who helped to make this year's BBQ lunch so successful!


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