Donald Keough, Staff Writer—

Looking for an easy way to start living more sustainably? Denison’s Green Team, a student run organization, is kicking off its first week of the composting service program. The club is looking for seniors living in apartments to participate.

Each apartment that signs up (via QR code) will receive a bucket to dispose of their food waste in. Every couple of days, students bring this bucket down to the dumpsters where there is a specified container for food waste. Then, students wash the bucket out and Green Team takes the food waste to the community garden to be converted into compost. 

There have been other composting programs in the past, however this year is the first year that Green Team will be facilitating alongside the office of sustainability. The program has been revived largely because of Lena Le, the current project manager of the program. She began talking with the office of sustainability last year as a junior, after noticing the large amounts of food waste outside apartments. 

“I heard there was a previous composting program, but there wasn’t enough behind the scenes effort to keep it going,” Le said. “So I decided to bring the project to our organization in hopes to build a stronger foundation for future classes.” 

This will be the program’s third time to be revived in the last six years. Currently, there are 19 apartments signed up, which is around 60 students. 

“[We’re doing] great in terms of progress,” Lina Le said. “I’m really happy with these first two weeks and I’m really excited to do sessions about how compost works in the future.”

Besides promoting more conscientious lifestyles, the program aims to help raise awareness of human impact with our food consumption. Food waste is the greatest contributor to our landfills, with only 4% being composted. 

“The vast majority of people on this planet don’t take the time to think about the little things.” Jeremy King said. “I think most students are engaged in it, but we also have students who don’t pay attention at all.” 

King is the director of sustainability and campus improvement at Denison. Part of his hopes are that the program will help educate others on how to live more environmentally friendly. Although the program has yet to last longer than two years, King has high hopes for this year, as two freshman students are already directly involved. 

“I’m excited to have these two first-year students, because it gives hope for continuity,” King said. “And from there, we can recruit more younger classes to allow us to keep the program going for future years.”

Looking ahead, the program is aiming to return to numbers similar to previous years, of 30-40 apartments not in anticipation of single handedly stopping all food waste, but to better spread awareness for living sustainably. 

“The goal of all this isn’t to say, we’re going to save the world one banana peel at a time,” Jeremy King said. “The goal is to get people thinking about these things, and realizing that it’s not a hard thing to do. By doing one small thing, that can turn into a lot of small things. Then those small things encourage others to do the same. That’s how I think change is made.”  

If you’re interested in composting your food waste and you’re living in an apartment, scan the QR code and fill out the google form. If you want to be a part of the behind the scenes effort for the program, email Jeremy King at [email protected]  for more information.