You’ve heard it before: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. But now there’s a new bin on the block: the green bin. If you live in Toronto, you probably have a green bin at home. But what about your home-away-from-home, whether that is New College, the Robarts stacks, or UC’s Junior Common Room?
“At home, I tend to do a much better job [of composting], since there are separate bins for food waste, recycling and garbage,” says Sarah Cheong, a second-year Sociology and Political Science student. If they’re already doing it at home, why do students find it so troublesome to compost on campus?
To understand city-wide and campus composting initiatives, it’s first necessary to learn a little Green Bin history.
The City of Toronto’s successful Green Bin Program was launched in 2002 to adapt to the closure of the city-owned Keele Valley landfill site. With the local site nearly filled to capacity and facing opposition from its neighbours, Toronto’s garbage had to be sent somewhere, and that somewhere was a private landfill in Michigan. There was just one catch: shipping Toronto’s garbage south of the border is three times more expensive than disposing of it locally.
Almost one third of that garbage was actually organic waste. By adding organics collection to Toronto’s waste disposal system, food waste could be processed north of the border and made into compost. The program, when implemented city-wide, was expected to substantially reduce truck trips to Michigan each year. In June 2001, then-Mayor Mel Lastman described the new program as “easy to understand” and “the most affordable option available to us.”
While Toronto’s decision to collect organic waste was largely based on economic considerations, separating compost from other solid waste also has environmental benefits. When food waste is sent to the landfill, it decomposes very slowly in the low-oxygen environment. This results in the release of methane, a greenhouse gas with 21 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide.
Composting practices began at the University of Toronto before green bins were introduced by the municipal government. U of T first tried collecting organic waste to be composted on campus in the early 1990s. When space and time constraints made this no longer feasible, the university began collecting food waste to be used in pig feed.
The success of this short-lived program was soon eclipsed by an organics recycling program that began in 1994 and involved 15 food-services locations on campus. The food waste collected at those locations was then picked up by a private company and turned into compost that was at one point in time sold by Boy Scouts as part of their fundraising initiatives.
Today, U of T is a leader in waste diversion, preventing 65.7 per cent of its waste from ending up in landfills through recycling and composting. In the first 15 years of organic waste recycling at U of T, 8,241.5 tonnes of waste were diverted. This is equivalent to 8,983 tonnes less carbon-dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.
U of T was recognized for the progress it has made in creating sustainable food and recycling programs in the 2011 College Sustainability Report Card, with an A grade in the food and recycling section and a grade of A- overall. The survey results that led to this stamp of approval show that 100 per cent of food scraps from the preparation of meals by dining halls are disposed of as organic waste.
While this is an important achievement, it occurs behind the scenes. What about the success of publicly accessible green bins for student use? The College Sustainability Report Card did not measure this much greater challenge.
A survey conducted at Michigan State University in 2009 explored four areas of knowledge relevant to student participation in recycling programs: knowledge of the benefits of recycling, of the university’s recycling practices, of which products can be recycled, and of where recycling bins are located on campus. Survey results indicated that the “what” and “where” of recycling — what can be recycled and where to find the right bins — were more important for student participation than the “why” — knowing the environmental benefits.
Lack of knowledge about what can be composted at U of T has been a problem in the past. “The most common thing is people throwing the container in along with the food instead of just putting the food in the bin and the container in the trash,” says Reno Strano, the Waste Management Supervisor and Recycling Coordinator at Facilities and Services. “Lots of bottles and bags also get thrown in,” he adds. Unfortunately, when too many non-compostable items are put in a green bin, the entire contents of the bin have to be put in the garbage.
Knowledge about where green bins are on campus is also a problem. When asked about her composting habits on campus, third-year environmental policy and practice student Brina McMillan says that when she throws food in the garbage it’s because there isn’t a green bin available to use.
“I could probably count the number of times that I have been able to dispose of my waste in a green bin, since they are just not easily accessible,” she laments.
The same is true for second-year engineering science student James Kristie. “When I have food waste on campus I just put it in the trash. I would put it in a green bin/food waste disposal can but I don’t think that I have ever seen one on campus,” he says.
There are actually several student-accessible green bins on campus, but with a campus as large as ours, and with so many places where students can grab a quick bite between classes, the green bins that do exist can get lost in the shuffle.
So why don’t we have more green bins on campus? Strano explains that the private contractor U of T uses has a minimum pick-up of two large green bins (called “toters”) per week for any given location. “If a location isn’t going to produce enough material to justify a pickup we can’t set it up,” he says. Sometimes waste from different buildings can be brought to one toter location, as is currently the practice with 63 and 65 St. George Street and Alumni House, but this might not always be possible.
There are, however, many locations at U of T already set up for organics pick up that could accommodate a new student-accessible green bin, provided there is someone who can empty it and that the building users support the initiative. A student project has just recently led to the addition of a public green bin to the Domtar student lounge in the Earth Science Centre.
How can students be encouraged to use the green bins that do exist? A study of household waste reduction in Exeter, United Kingdom, found that recycling behaviour (which would include organics recycling) is different from reduction and reusing behaviour. Recycling behaviour is more affected by logistics — access to the right facilities, knowledge of the facilities, and the perception that recycling is convenient. The study also found that recycling is norm-based, and that seeing other people recycle will increase your intention to do the same.
The conclusions of this study and the study conducted at Michigan State University bode well for increasing organic waste diversion at U of T. It comes down to making it more convenient for students to dispose of their food scraps. Making more green bins available in more locations, especially where students like to eat, would both make it more convenient to compost and increase the visibility of composting on campus. This could help make putting food waste in the green bin instead of the trash a social norm.
At the end of the day, does it matter to students whether or not U of T is sustainable?
“To be honest, not really,” says Tiffany Yeung, a fourth-year applied mathematics student.
“I’m not sure whether fees would increase even more if U of T wanted to become more ‘sustainable,’” she says.
Arthur David, a second-year International Relations student disagrees. “We live in an age where we have to be more careful in decision making processes and the consequences of ill-advised actions are never far from being felt. It would also do the university a whole lot of good from a PR standpoint too,” he says.
While not everyone sees this as an important issue, it certainly seems to be gaining traction as awareness of environmental issues increases. It’s a potentially slow process, but perhaps in a few years, composting on campus will be just as common as reusing and recycling.
