UNCA returns to composting 2 years after the previous composting initiative ended. The return is driven by efforts and funding by the Student Environmental Center (SEC) at UNCA in this fall semester with a partnership with Compost Asheville.
According to Cameryn Turner, the co-director of the SEC on campus, “The Student Environmental Center at UNC Asheville is a student-funded student-run department that seeks to engage students, faculty, staff, and the Asheville community in conversation and action around environmental issues. We are a campus resource for information related to environmental stewardship, university sustainability, and community outreach.”
Environmental Specialist Olivia Gray shares why the composting initiative was absent for the past 2 years.
“In August of 2023, Atlas Organics, who we contracted to haul our food away to create compost, moved out of the region and that increased the cost and made it unaffordable to use them,” Gray said.
According to a previous article written by Addison Write and Joushua Staley of the Blue Banner, the former Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus Operations, David Todd, searched for partners after the contract with Atlas Organic was lost.
“Finding a new composting partner quickly is a top priority, but we do not have a contract in place at this time,” Todd said.
A contract was never found.
“But the woman in my position before me, she was reaching out to different composting companies to see if we could reinstate it, but no composting company had sent us, like the number because it was unaffordable,” Gray said.
Olivia Gray says this returning composting effort will be a little different than before.
“So now we are reinstating partial composting this fall semester, and it’ll be the first time in 2 years that we will have some composting on campus,” Gray said.
Olivia Williams, co-director of the SEC, defines what partial composting is.
“It’s like a smaller scale version of what we did. It’s like preconsumer waste that we’re saving, and it will save about 1000lbs of food scraps for Brown a month.”, Williams said.
Olivia Gray shares more insight about partial composting.
“Partial composting is like preconsumer waste that we’re saving and preconsumer waste is everything from kitchen produce that’s not usable. So, any trim waste that they (Austin Adams) create like when prepping the food or imperfect produce or mishaps,” Gray said.
According to Gray, the initiative to get composting back on campus was student interest and voices.
“I feel like we have a lot of students asking us about composting on campus and confusion about it and it’s just something we’ve been really wanting to do again,” Gray said.
The start date for composting is currently unknown because the budget is still being figured.
“So, Olivia (Gray) and I are still kind of working on our budget right now, but we really hope to start in October,” Turner said.
The new composting program is being funded by a composting proposal by Compost Asheville and partial funding from SEC.
“Be giving a huge shout out to the SEC for funding this,” Gray said.
