RIT looks at Cornell and Roberts Wesleyan Composting

12/13 /07      Rochester, NY     

College: Rochester Institute of Technology

I emailed RIT's recycling center early this week in interest of what RIT plans on doing as far as composting food scraps.  RIT Recycling Administrator Tyler Stewart, told me that he is looking into a composting system and will be monitoring Roberts Wesleyan, who recently began their own composting system with Metro Waste. RIT disposes its waste through Heberle, which doesn't compost, obviously. He did say that he is looking into getting plastic silverware with sugar/corn based bi product, which can be composted. He referred me to Cornell's web page, since he said Cornell is a clear leader in college composting.  So I took a look.

Cornell has a very good system.  Every year around 350 tons of garbage is composted instead of going to the dump.  At the moment most of Cornell's composting is done behind the scenes, but their goal is to get students to separate it through a simple separating system.  The University has applied this system in a few places, yet it hasn't worked very well.  Cornell student Stephan Zelno writes, that students seem to have a problem with separating their plastic forks from their spaghetti, thus only 1 out of every 3 bins ends up being composted.  Stephen states that the students have to start learning and putting in effort to separate their trash for the better good of the environment.  

That's where I come in.  As an Industrial Designer I must create a system that alleviates this issue.  Cornell is on the right track, but their system design is weak.  According to RIT's recycling administrator Tyler Stewart RIT must first find a commercial composter, like Metro Waste.  From there we can design this system to get students involved and compost much of the trash RIT sends to the landfill.