One Woman’s Trash is Another Woman’s Treasure:
Composting Organic Kitchen Waste at Smith College
Emily Edmonds-Langham
EVS 300 – Peckol & White
May 8, 2008
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Abstract
I began this project with the intention of exploring and further developing
the relationship between Dining Services and the emerging Smith Community
Garden (SCG hereafter) with specific attention to organic waste and composted
material, in an effort to close the organic waste loop on the Smith Campus. The
first step involved doing some research about both compost and community
gardens: what makes good compost? Why compost? What is the value (both
social and economic) of a community garden? I then conducted interviews with
members of the staff and student body who were connected to the SCG in some
capacity before ultimately visiting (and doing some work at) the Garden myself. I
also arranged to visit the Hampshire College farm in order to compare their
composting system with our own program. As a result of my work, I discovered
that we produce an incredible amount of organic waste, both in the kitchens and
on the grounds, and therefore are capable of creating far more compost than we
will ever feasibly use. I was surprised to find so much composting already under
way, as well as fairly well developed plans for expansion. Currently, our kitchen
waste slated for compost is outsourced to a farm in Greenfield, but there are
plans to bring the operation closer to home. I think it is important that the SCG
be able to take advantage of this compost, which will provide different nutrients
than the compost created by our yard waste and horse manure that they are
currently using.
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Introduction
The fifteen dining rooms on campus, while wonderful for fostering a sense
of community, are responsible for a hefty portion of Smith’s waste stream: the
kitchens produce ⅓rd of our landfill waste every year, weighing in at 300 tons of
material (Dombkowski 2008). Luckily, not all of the organic waste produced on
campus is slated to sit in a landfill: the Grounds Department deposits our yard
waste at a compound at the Fort Hill site, located just off of South Street. The
massive piles of leaves, grass clippings, and horse manure (200-300 cubic yards’
worth every year) decompose and provide roughly 100 cubic yards of compost
(Dombkowski 2008). In addition, Dining Services has spearheaded a
composting program in the Cutter/Ziskind and Chase/Duckett dining halls.
Compost is clearly alive and well at Smith College, and shows promise for future
expansion.
One of the fundamental questions all this composting poses is why
compost at all? The simple answer is that this process diverts some of our waste
from the landfill, giving materials a chance to decompose and provide beneficial
nutrients to the soil. J. I. Rodale posits in his comprehensive Complete Book of
Composting that, “In the soft, warm bosom of a decaying compost heap, a
transformation from life to death and back again is taking place. Life is leaving
the living plants of yesterday, but in their death these leaves and stalks pass on
their vitality to the coming generations of future seasons. Here in a dank and
mouldy pile the wheel of life is turning” (Rodale 1975). While Rodale perhaps
romanticizes the process, he hits on something essential: by composting, we
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“close the loop” between the produce we eat which draws nutrients from the soil,
and replenishes the environment through the decay of parts of that same
produce, thus renewing the soil’s ability to provide for a new crop. It is the health
of these new crops that I am particularly interested in, as Smith gets its own
Community Garden off, or rather into, the ground.
Michael Pollan also provides a convincing argument for composting in his
recent New York Times Magazine article urging us all to do our part, however
small: “[I]n a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed,
nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the
garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollarfree” (Pollan 2008). Through our composting program, we have the potential to
produce at least a few “free lunches” as we recycle and repurpose our own
waste. The idea of eating as locally as possible is gaining traction in our
petroleum-based society, and Smith certainly ascribes to the notion of buying
local produce whenever possible. Barbara Kingsolver shares her family’s
experience with eating locally for a year, pointing out their place in a larger trend
in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:
Something positive is also happening under the surface of
our nation’s food preference paradigm. It could be called a
movement. It includes gardeners who grow some of their own
produce—one-quarter of all U.S. households, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau. Just as importantly, it’s the city dwellers who roll
their kids out of bed on Saturday mornings and head down to the
farmers’ markets (Kingsolver 2007).
The desire for a community garden expressed by the students, faculty, and staff
involved with the SCG project is not unique; the writers of the SCG proposal
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recognize their place within a larger tradition: “We believe the tradition of the
Victory garden needs reviving, as a patriotic and proactive avenue for current
Smith students to ‘do their part’ in the fight against global climate change” (SCG
2008). In supplementing the College’s produce with some of the home-grown
variety, we not only save money, but also reduce emissions of green house
gases that would have been released in the transport of produce from far-flung
locales.
Community gardens provide a number of benefits: fresh produce is not the
only end result. In the introduction to The Meaning of Gardens, Mark Francis
and Randolph Hester, Jr. discuss the value of the community garden:
Community gardens result in part from a growing reaction to the
privatization of public life and the need for spaces that support
social contact and publicness. They also spring from an increased
interest in places that invite and inspire ongoing change and
modifications through public stewardship and local involvement
(Francis and Hester, Jr. 1990).
They provide a balm for our increasingly isolating society, as well an opportunity
to come together and generate results one can see. A functional garden requires
the work of many hands: as a result, it motivates cohesion within a community.
Kate Brown and Andrew Jameton discuss the physical benefits of gardening in
their article in the Journal of Public Health Policy: “…[P]lants and gardening
contribute to an improved quality of life and overall health. For example,
recreational gardening has been observed to be a way to relax and release
stress” according to research done by the Plant-People Council (Brown and
Jameton 2000). Smithies, and college students in general, are always in need of
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ways to relieve stress. What better way to do so than to spend some time in the
Garden?
My goal in researching this topic was to learn about our composting efforts
on campus and to discover the source of SCG’s compost. Armed with this
information, I hoped to make suggestions about building a relationship between
organic waste producers on campus (the dining rooms) and the end user of the
composted waste (the SCG). I was also very interested to learn about
Hampshire College’s efforts and hoped it would provide a useful model, owing to
the fact that it is a long established and successful student initiative. I think
achieved my research objectives.
Methodology
Interviews:
I set out intending to interview people involved with either the SCG or the
composting effort in different capacities, whether as a member of the Smith
College staff or as a student. After contacting Hannah Wren Dunning, a student
involved with the set-up of the SCG, about a possible meeting, Hannah gave me
access to the Garden’s email account for research purposes, which allowed me
to better prepare for later interviews. I then emailed both Kathy Zieja of Dining
Services, Bob Dombkowski of the Grounds Department and Leslie Cox, the
Manager of the Hampshire Farm to learn more about current levels composting
on both our campus and that of one of the other Five Colleges. Before meeting
with any of them, I drafted a comprehensive list of questions and points I hoped
to address in my conversations with all of the subjects of my interviews. Kathy
redirected my enquiry to Ann Finley, who works beneath her but also serves on
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the Sustainability Committee on campus and would be an ideal person to discuss
composting in the dining rooms with. They were both incredibly supportive and
excited about the SCG. Ann also sent me in search of E.J., one of the cooks,
who is a serious gardener and who was pleased to recommend the very helpful
Complete Book of Composting, published by the Rodale Press.
I visited the SCG at their Fort Hill site during their weekend work days
(April 25 and 26) and talked to a number of people involved in the effort. I
photographed the goings-on there, as well as taking part in some bed-digging
myself. On the first day, I spoke to Marianna Ballou and Mandy Lineweber, and
caught up with Hannah Wren Dunning on the second. They gave me a helpful
history of the Garden, as well as shared some concerns and issues the
organization faced, and outlined future plans. I also visited the Hampshire Farm
for comparison, and there conducted my interview with Leslie Cox who
graciously showed me their composting operation.
Textual Research:
The epic tome, The Complete Book of Composting, turned out to be the
tip of the composting iceberg: Forbes has a very helpful collection of books about
setting up a home compost system which I found very helpful in my research. I
also requested a number of books from the Five College library system, some of
them government publications, about establishing community gardens and
assessing their social as well as economic value. I looked at some gardening
memoirs, especially Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, with the
hope of finding more personalized accounts of what brings people back to the
vegetable garden. Some of these memoirs were more useful than others: turns
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out Compost College has very little to do with composting after all, but rather
recounts one man’s experience living in a commune by that name in Northern
California in the late 60s and early 70s. Alas! In addition, I found Michael
Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article, “Why Bother?” very timely and helpful
for providing background information about making an impact.
Results
Yard Waste:
As noted above, the campus produces a vast amount of yard waste every
year; currently there are 400 cubic yards of compost at the Fort Hill site, pictured
in Figures 1-3. Bob Dombkowski attempted to give me a sense of the 100 cubic
yards of compost we produce annually, saying, “I could cover the ITT with feet of
compost” (Dombkowski 2008). The Grounds Department, in conjunction with the
Lyman Botanic Garden, only uses about 50 cubic yards of the finished product
annually; this useable material is shown in Figure 3. These piles must be
maintained, which involves the occasional turning of material. Stu Campbell
summarizes the task of turning one’s pile in Let It Rot!: “Turning your pile is the
only ‘bummer’—the only real chore in the whole business of compost making. A
cubic yard of finished compost weighs about 800 to 1100 pounds; compost-inthe-making weights slightly less” (Campbell 1998). Luckily, Bob and his crew
have heavy machinery for this chore. Leslie Cox can be seen performing this
task on Hampshire’s compost in Figures 4 and 5. As you can see, they have
significantly less backlog – but they also have a fully operational 125-acre farm to
make use of this material.
Kitchen Waste:
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The story of Smith’s composted kitchen waste is much more complicated,
even though the program is relatively small. While currently we send 300 tons of
kitchen waste to the landfill every year, the compost program diverts some of that
waste. At present, the collection of our organic waste falls to the Alternative
Recycling firm, which is based in Leeds. Their service picks up plastic bins full of
waste three times a week: they provide bins and bags, shown in Figure 8. The
system does not require a change in behavior from the students, who are already
used to scraping their plates into a bin, such as the one in Tyler (Figure 7). This
material then goes to a farm in Greenfield to be composted, at a financial cost to
the College. The composting program provides an educational opportunity: dos
and don’ts of composting are posted in the dish windows, as shown in Figure 9.
Dining Services also took part in the Sustainability Workshops which were part of
First Year Orientation this fall. Ann Finley discussed the current composting
program with the class of 2011, and detailed what Dining Services specifically is
doing to address the issue of sustainability in the dining rooms (Finley 2008).
The composting program is much more professional than its previous
incarnation, which was based in the Quad and was a student initiative. Ann
Finley laid out the history of this past effort: seven years ago, a group of students
attempted to collect some of the Quad’s organic waste for compost. They
acquisitioned a pickup truck from Physical Plant (which occasionally broke
down), and picked up the material themselves once a week and deposited it at
the Smith Vocational School where it would ultimately decompose. However,
due to the fact that student availability fluctuates greatly over the course of the
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semester, the service was irregular at best – and one cannot afford to be
irregular when there are rotting banana peels involved. This problem does not
persist under the current program, which began in December 2006 in
Cutter/Ziskind and January 2007 at Chase/Duckett (Finley 2008).
The Smith Community Garden:
The SCG represents a much more successful student initiative: after a
search of only one year, the group found a site and will have seedlings in the
ground for harvest this summer and fall. The space allotted to them at Fort Hill is
a former playground, and therefore initially lay under 18” of mulch which had to
be removed before seeding the beds. For an illustration of the de-mulching, refer
to Figure 12. The Garden measures 137’ by 51’ and the group has dug six 18”
raised beds, which can be seen in Figure 10. The beds will be reinforced with
the board frames which are being prepared and completed in Figure 11. Bob
Dombkowski will provide truckloads of loam once the beds are prepared to
receive it (Dombkowski 2008). Because the Garden is at Fort Hill alongside the
composted yard waste, they already have a convenient source of compost.
However, all compost guides stress the importance of having a multitude of
ingredients in the perfect compost. For example, Campbell provides the
following list of items ideal for compost:
[I]t is worth mentioning some of the things you are most likely to get
your hands on without spending a great deal of time and money.
These might include ashes, feathers, garbage, grass clippings,
ground stone and shells, hedge trimmings, hopes, leather waste,
newspaper, peat moss, pine needles, sawdust, seaweed, sod, and
weeds, among others (Campbell 1998).
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While the compost produced by the yard waste has some of these components,
it would be beneficial to the soil to have a more complex mix of compost. Leslie
Fox rightly referred to the pile in Figure 6 as his “carbon pile,” for hay serves
primarily as a carbon source in the compost world. Better to balance this with
kitchen waste in the eyes of Robyn Bem: “The various vegetable and fruit
trimmings available in households, groceries, and restaurants are rich in nitrogen
and other nutrients,” providing examples such as banana skins (high in
potassium, phosphorous, and nitrogen), citrus rinds (the thicker they are, the
more nitrogen they possess), egg shells (calcium), and peanut shells (nitrogen)
(Bem 1978). The combination of these ingredients makes for healthier soil and
happier plants.
The SCG intends to plant a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in their
six beds: Marianna Ballou and Mandy Lineweber listed carrots, beets, eggplant,
lettuce, watermelons, pumpkins, peppers (chili and bell), and tomatoes in rapid
succession as some examples of what they intended to produce this summer
and fall. There has also been talk of a canning operation so that students can
continue to enjoy the fruits of the Garden’s labors throughout the year (Ballou
and Lineweber 2008). Kathy Zieja, for one, is very excited about serving their
squash in the fall and intends to have a harvest dinner supplied by SCG produce
in the fall (Zieja 2008). One of the major hurdles standing between the SCG and
harvest time is the issue of water: the spigot adjacent to the plot does not work,
but they hope to get it examined by a plumber soon and will rely on the kindness
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of another building for now until the problem is addressed (Ballou and Lineweber
2008).
Another problem facing the SCG, which has been resolved in the short
term, is that of summer care. This summer, four students have volunteered to
stay on and tend the beds, but this is not a solution that can be relied on in future
years. While establishing a PRAXIS internship or two was initially explored, the
Garden leadership discovered that students cannot receive that particular stipend
because the Garden is situated on property that the College owns (Dunning
2008). Hampshire has solved this problem by allocating funds to hire a summer
staff, which draws not only from both the Hampshire and larger Five College
student bodies, but is open to all interested parties (Cox 2008).
Due to the growing trend of environmentalism and eating organically, I am
sure that Hampshire has no problem filling these spots. Both the composting
going on at Smith as well as the SCG effort reflect this trend, as does my
examination of the issue in the first place. The presence and continued great
work by the Sustainability Committee encourages my believe that Smith is doing
its part for the environment, or at least attempting to implement schemes that
move us closer to doing so.
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Tables and Figures
Figure 1. Yard waste at Fort Hill, organized by age.
Figure 2. The author beside one pile, for scale.
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Figure 3. Yard waste in the final stages of breakdown.
Figure 4. Hampshire Farm Manager aerating and mixing his piles.
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Figure 5. Pile in penultimate stage of breakdown.
Figure 6. Carbon pile, made up mostly of hay and leaves.
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Figure 7. Old system of waste disposal (Tyler).
Figure 8. New system of waste disposal (Chase/Duckett).
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Figure 9. Educational sign in dish window (Chase/Duckett).
Figure 10. Digging beds.
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Figure 11. Preparing boards for raised beds.
Figure 12. Clearing mulch for an old sandbox for a bed.
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Discussion
Americans are growing increasingly aware of the incredible volume of
waste we produce annually, and of our land’s finite ability to absorb such waste.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, “[F]ood
waste accounts for at least 10 percent of all municipal solid waste generated in
the state, or nearly 900,000 tons per year” (DEP 2005). They use this figure as
encouragement for home composting of kitchen waste. America is catching on,
and not just in Massachusetts. Campbell breaks down these figures further, but
instead works with the national average, writing, “The volume of yard waste we
generate works out to about 230 pounds per person per year. Food waste adds
another 100 pounds per person per year … It’s estimated that all residences
could reduce their total annual volume of waste by 35 percent if they composted
at home” (Campbell 1998). Here at Smith, especially in light of Dombkowski’s
revelation that food waste accounts for ⅓ rd of our waste on campus, it is clear
than an effort is being made to reduce our landfill deposits as much as we
possibly can. We have certainly made impressive progress.
With the addition of the SCG to our resources, we find an end-user of our
composted organic material within our own community. Bem provides a
wonderful description of this end result that should make us proud to be using it:
Scoop up a handful of your compost. It should feel loose
and crumbly. The compost should be a dark brown color and smell
earthy and pleasant. Look closely at the compost in your hand.
Some of the organic materials have decomposed completely and
turned to humus—the dark uniform-looking substance of the
compost. … The compost you have made will substantially enrich
your garden soil (Bem 1978).
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If this passage doesn’t inspire you to compost, I don’t know what will. The SCG
has the capacity to absorb some of the compost produced by both our yard
waste and kitchen waste, especially if our dining room composing program
moves to a site closer to home.
Dining Services, in conjunction with both Physical Plant and the Grounds
Department who provide funds and labor respectively, has high hopes for the
future of the program. Currently, they are hard at work with a local farmer,
attempting to secure a permit from the state to expand their composting
operation. As of July 1st, the Grounds Department is no longer responsible for
the removal of waste from Smith’s various tenanted properties, which will free
their schedule for increased pick-up of material destined for compost. Once the
permit is acquired, the new operation will be within five miles of the College, and
therefore our staff can collect and dispose of the material and allow us to
terminate our contract with Alternative Recycling. The College already owns a
truck that has been retro-fitted with the parts necessary for this kind of work, and
would very much like to put it to good use (Dombkowski 2008). Once all these
pieces are in place, Ann Finley expressed a desire to expand the program
beyond Chase/Duckett and Cutter/Ziskind to encompass the entire campus, thus
increasing our sustainability (Finley 2008).
This planned expansion also provides increased educational
opportunities. Ann Finley also discussed a plan to continue to incorporate
sustainability discussions into First Year Orientation, as well as an idea to
describe the composting program in the first House Meetings of the year as a
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way to raise awareness (Finley 2008). Part of what makes Hampshire’s program
so successful, according to Leslie Cox, is the level of awareness on campus,
which he estimates at about 70% (Cox 2008). When I began this project, I had
no idea that any dining room composting was going on, as it was all happening
on other parts of campus that I do not visit frequently. Awareness must be at the
center of any plan to expand this program, for many students do not know what
materials are appropriate for compost, such as those listed by Campbell in the
“Results” section.
Finley estimates that the compost created by one dining room would be
enough to cover the soil-enriching needs of the SCG (Finely 2008). As seen in
the reduction that occurs in the yard waste (200-300 cubic yards of material
breaking down into 100 cubic yards of compost), it takes a fair amount of raw
material to create healthy compost. Luckily, the kitchens produce an incredible
amount of organic waste which are more than capable, according to Bem cited
above, of becoming a well balanced compost mixture. When mixed with the
compost from the Fort Hill site, the SCG should be the proud possessors of fine
soil. On the whole, we produce far too much compost to be significantly
absorbed by the Garden, but it certainly meets their immediate needs.
In the future, the SCG hopes to be an educational resource for courses
across the academic spectrum. According to their proposal,
… art students can sketch tomato vines, engineering students can
work on plans to improve irrigation through rain water collection, or
chemistry and biology students can study the soil composition. The
Garden can be used in classes like Lisa Armstrong’s Feminisms
and the Fate of the Planet, or Leslie King’s First Year Seminar,
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Science and Politics of Food, Water and Energy. The possibilities
for scholarly and practical application are endless (SCG 2008).
A garden provides many and varied opportunities to learn about agriculture, food
production and distribution, and the social context within which these systems
operate. So much of the learning that occurs during a student’s time at Smith
takes place outside of the classroom: the SCG provides yet another setting for
extracurricular learning. According to a garden guide published by the United
Nations, “Gardens are good for learning: they are a highly practical and direct
form of education, where children can see the results of their decisions and
actions. … Apart from practical skills in agriculture and horticulture, gardens are
a living laboratory for the study of environmental issues and life sciences” (UN
2005). Of course, students at Smith are not children, but we still have much to
learn. Practical knowledge, paired with the health benefits of gardening cited
above, provides Smithies with resources they can take away with them for life
after Smith.
The Hampshire Farm model provides more valuable lessons to learn: they
deal with the summer help issue by allocating funds for crews of summer interns.
If the Garden is going to last, it will need the full financial support of the
Organization Resource Committee, with enough funding to provide an adequate
stipend to summer interns similar to the PRAXIS program. On-campus housing
arrangements must also be made for these interns: the $2000 PRAXIS stipend
(or its equivalent) does not stretch as far as one might think. The difficulty in
comparing our SCG to Hampshire’s Farm arises in the scale of the operation: we
will be planting six small beds, while Hampshire cultivates 125 acres, growing
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both hay and vegetable crops. As a result, they are much better at absorbing
their compost: there wasn’t any ready-to-use compost pile when I visited
because all 1,200 tons of material had been distributed on the fields the week
before.
However, Leslie Cox is interested in expanding Hampshire’s composting
capabilities. He called their current operation “pretty primitive,” expressing a
desire to invest in larger machinery capable of handling much more waste (Cox
2008). If Hampshire is successful in expanding its operation, perhaps we would
be interested in collaborating with them and sending some of our kitchen waste
there. Unfortunately, such expansion may still be a few years in the future for
them, as this machinery is incredibly expensive. Because the Hampshire land, in
part, is technically a farm, they were grandfathered and did not have to go
through a very difficult permitting process regarding their composting. Rather,
the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources checks on them once
yearly.
While we may not be ready, as a culture or a campus, to “wring most of
the petroleum out of our food chain, even if that mean(s) giving up some things”
in the style of Barbara Kingsolver, we are making discernible progress in that
direction (Kingsolver 2007). With the founding of the SCG, we will be able to
supplement our produce with fruits and vegetables that were grown right here on
campus. These crops will be nourished by the composted remains of organic
wastes produced by Smith’s own trees, lawns, and horses, as we attempt to
absorb and repurpose our organic waste. By returning nutrients to the soil via
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compost, we prevent material from ending up in landfills, where its chances of
decomposing as it ought are slim due to the lack of light, air, and water in landfill
systems.
The value of a community garden cannot be stressed enough. Already, it
has drawn people from all ends of the administration and student body together,
and in conjunction with the efforts of the Sustainability Committee and the
composting program, provides many opportunities for idea sharing. The
sustainability effort is an integrated one: to truly make an impact, we must modify
our behavior in all aspects of our lives – not just in our food choices. Education
remains central to any effort to reduce our impact upon the planet: here at Smith,
we are uniquely situated to both educate and be educated about these issues.
The SCG provides an incredible amount of educational opportunities, and I share
their hope that it will be a resource for many academic departments. The
composting program also calls for a wider dispersal of information, much more
comprehensive in scope than the small signs posted in the dish windows of
Figure 9. Ann Finley’s idea of incorporating sustainability information into the first
House Meeting of the year is a worthwhile one; perhaps the Earth
Representatives elected by each house could also share the responsibility for
this particular task of education. If the issues faced by these two endeavors are
seriously addressed, both the SCG and the kitchen composting program will
enjoy tremendous success and longevity.
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Works Cited
Ballou, Marianna and Mandy Lineweber. Personal Interview. April 26, 2008.
Bem, Robyn. Everyone’s Guide to Home Composting. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Company, 1978.
Brown, Kate H. and Andrew L. Jameton. “Public Health Implications of Urban
Agriculture.”Journal of Public Health Policy, Vol. 21, No. 1, (2000): pp. 2039. Accessed April 23, 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3343472>
Campbell, Stu. Let It Rot!: The Gardener’s Guide to Composting. Pownal:
Storey Communications, Inc. 1998.
Cox, Leslie. Personal Interview. May 6, 2008.
Dombkowski, Robert. Personal Interview. April 24, 2008.
Dunning, Hannah Wren. Personal Interview. April 27, 2008.
Finley, Ann. Personal Interview. April 25, 2008.
Francis, Mark and Randolp T. Hester, Jr. eds. The Meaning of Gardens: Idea,
Place, and Action. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.
Kingsolver, Barbara and Steven L. Hop, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal,
Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins
Publisher, 2007.
Massachusetts. Department of Environmental Protection. Bureau of Waste
Prevention. “Fact Sheet: Food Waste Composting.” February, 2005.
Accessed April 25, 2008.
<http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/organics.pdf>
Pollan, Michael. “Why Bother?” The New York Times Magazine. April 20, 2008.
Accessed May 6, 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/
20wwln-ledet.html?ex=1366516800&en=4c931d0a068a2a1a&
ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink>
Rodale, J.I. ed. The Complete Book of Composting. Emmaus: Rodale Books,
Inc. 1975.
Smith Community Garden. “Smith Community Garden Proposal.” Smith
Community Garden. March 8, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2008.
<http://smithgarden.blogspot.com/2008/03/smith-community-gardenproposal.html>
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United Nations. Food and Agriculture Organization. Setting Up and Running a
School Garden: A Manual for Teachers, Parents and Communities.
Rome: United Nations, 2005.
Zieja, Kathleen. “Re: Compost.” Email to Emily Edmonds-Langham. April 23,
2008.
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