Washington College

Center for Environment & Society

Composting comes to Washington College

Composting

The WC composting program was established in Fall 2005.

Composting

Did you know the most relevant historical figure known with connections to compost is the institution's first benefactor himself, George Washington? Most commonly known as the United States' first President, he was also the nation's first public figure to adamantly promote composting as a method to amend damaged soils. In Paul Leland Haworth's 1915 biography, Washington "saved manure as if it were already so much gold, and hoped with its use and with judicious rotation of crops to accomplish good tilith." In 1999 at Mount Vernon, Washington's estate, a structure believed to be Washington's "dung repository" was discovered and excavated.

The late 1700s structure has since been rebuilt and put back into use for composted materials. This and other evidence, such as a letter to a friend describing experiments that Washington conducted himself to find the best "recipe" for compost, lends substantial evidence to establishing Washington as an environmentally friendly 18th century farmer.

Let's follow George's lead here at Washington College and begin redirecting our breakfast food wastes and scraps in a more sustainable manner to a compost heap and eventually back to the College landscaping itself. Be a part of the process and feel free to compost the following Dining Hall solid waste breakfast items in the appropriate bin:

Read the related Elm articles: 4/7/06 | 10/27/06

PLEASE DO NOT PUT MEATS, EGGS, OR DAIRY INTO THE COMPOST BIN.

The reason that high protein foods such as meats, eggs, or dairy are not thrown into the compost pile is because they contain high amounts of nitrogen, which can negatively alter the "recipe" for good compost. The two largest and most controllable factors influencing the quality of compost are carbon and nitrogen and specifically their proportions to one another. A good compost pile will have between a 25:1 and 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. There are a couple of reasons that you do not want the nitrogen ratio too high. If it is very high the beneficial microbes within the pile will not be able to utilize it all and the nitrogen will be given off as a metabolic byproduct in the form of ammonia gas. Ammonia smells, and it will attract rodents, making your compost pile very unattractive.

Also, high nitrogen ratios will increase the temperature of the pile (caused from microbes eating the organic matter), which will cause more nitrogen to be lost in the form of ammonia gas. Nitrogen is an important soil amendment and if too much of it is given off as ammonia it will deplete the soiling amending qualities of the compost. However, with all that said if you have too little nitrogen in your compost pile it will take much longer to reach its stable end-product because the microbes within it will lack an important biological compound for growth and consumption.

Compost for Sustainability

By definition, composting is the reduction of organic matter to a more stable humus-like compound through successive microbial communities. This definition in its broadest sense can be applied to the everyday processes of nature that occur in the first few inches of soil. These natural processes have been occurring since the first microbial communities established themselves on earth hundreds of millions of years ago and have become an essential part of the dynamic of the earth, or, put more romantically, "the circle of life."

Without the microbial breakdown of organic matter such as plant biomass, the bodies of higher and lower organisms, and other biological oriented compounds, essential chemical "building blocks" like carbon and nitrogen, along with other equally essential nutrients would not be recycled and the critical connection between life and death would be lost.

Compost in a Garden

As it pertains to man, compost has a variety of applications. Depending on its application, its value will be found in either the composting process or the composting product. The most well known application for compost is as a soil amendment for gardeners, but it can also be used to prevent soil erosion, to help reestablish degraded natural environments, and to prevent plant disease as a rich organic product.

The process of compost has positive implications for the environment as well. By composting we can significantly reduce the amount of waste that goes into our landfills, a finite resource for trash deposition, and we can also clean up polluted and contaminated soils for reuse through a process called bioremediation. The United States government spends millions of dollars on composting as a bioremediation technology each year.

By employing the insatiable and indiscriminate appetite of microbes, scientists have discovered how to take contaminated soils (those containing oils, PCB's, pesticides, and explosives for example) and not only neutralize the toxins but make them into nutrient rich healthy soils for plant re-growth and proliferation.

At Washington College the food scraps redirected away from our Dining Hall will be composted for reapplication to the campus. By contributing to the composting process you will be contributing to reviving and sustaining the health of our campus.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

For more on composting in general: The Rodale Book of Composting

For more on composting at Washington College: tholste2@washcoll.edu

Brown compostable napkins

In an effort to live more sustainably the WCDS has switched from using bleached white napkins to brown compostable napkins that will be redirected along with consumer food scraps and pre-consumer salad bar scraps to the compost pile located on site at Buildings and Grounds.

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