Students Expressing Environmental Dedication (SEED), a UW residence hall environmental group, has developed and is testing a pilot project in conjunction with Housing and Food Services (HFS) that could change the face of recycling at the UW.

A great deal of food is thrown away everyday and the UW is taking an active stance to improve a global problem starting with the residence halls.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton marked 25 percent as the amount of the U.S. food supply that is wasted daily, reported stopthehunger.com, an informational Web site regarding hunger.

This quarter, SEED has developed the Lander Compost Pilot Project, a new experiment in effect in Lander Hall that hopes to make composting an accessible source of recycling in residence halls.

Compost bins are located next to trash bins in Terry-Lander Hall's 1101 Cafe, with signs explaining what compost is and how it is environmentally viable.

Items that can be composted include any organic product originating from plants or animals. Common items composted in the 1101 Cafe are food scraps, paper cups, napkins and paper plates.

"It felt really limiting not to be able to decide our own ecological impact just because we lived on campus," SEED Director and freshman Ariana Taylor-Stanley said. "Now we have a new way to make our own decision about how we treat the planet."

SEED launched the project by placing one compost bin in the 1101 Cafe, with SEED members advertising and educating people in the dining halls about composting. Since the launch of the project, compost bins have also been placed in 8 at McMahon and McCarty Hall's Ian's Domain.

Realizing that residents often used takeout boxes and ate in their dorm rooms, SEED proposed to expand the pilot project, placing compost bins on four of the seven residential floors of Lander Hall. Volunteers known as compost captains monitor the compost bins to ensure contaminants such as plastic material are not thrown in.

"I check on the smaller bin in the kitchen, and I empty those into the one in the garbage room," freshman and Compost Captain Kristina Reinhardt said. "If it's getting really full, I can make a call and then the compost crew can get together and dump that. When I see people composting on the floor, I like to ask them about how the project is going. I just keep an eye on how the buckets are being filled and being used."

Taylor-Stanley also said the Compost Crew members are responsible for weighing the compost, measuring contamination and depositing the compost into a larger bin for pickup.

"We're trying to figure out if it will work to have compost on the floors in terms of participation and contamination, and also establish how much work it will add to a custodian's job once the pilot is over and becomes a regular part of resident life," Taylor-Stanley said.

The project has developed an expansive and supportive networking system. Along with volunteers and SEED, students have joined the project's Facebook group to spread the word across campus.

"This is a student project, and no custodians are being paid to deal with [the compost], so we'll have to take them out for a quarter," Taylor-Stanley said. "It might be kind of gross, but we'll tough it out in thick rubber gloves and beautiful Compost Crew T-shirts so people know what we're up to, because we are sick of throwing so much away."

From Ohio University to UC Davis, campuses across the nation have begun to take notice of the concept of composting with similar programs, and the Lander Compost Pilot Project has designated the UW as a pioneer for composting among other colleges.

"The goal of the pilot program is to have compost bins on every floor of every residence hall next year so it can be accessible to every residence hall student," Taylor-Stanley said. "The overall goal of having compost on campus, aside from minimizing our waste stream, is to have all UW students graduate with an awareness of the garbage they create and feel empowered to find alternatives to trash."

The program hopes to present students with knowledge about composting, its benefits and the need for responsible waste management.

"Composting empowers everyone on campus to make a choice about where a good portion of our waste goes: garbage or compost," Taylor-Stanley said. "We get to set an example for the general community. If someone can look at UW, a big public school, and see that everyone at that school knows what composting is, does it and thinks it's a normal part of life, that person's going to have a lot tougher time justifying throwing something in the garbage."

Group members hope the project will show students that both the problem and the solution begin on an individual level.

"Every week, the compost numbers from Lander are going up," Taylor-Stanley said. "Almost everywhere I go, people tell me how excited they are about having compost accessible to them. Trash is gross, and people love not feeling responsible for creating it."

Only time will tell if the pioneering project will flourish or be trashed, but for now, it is serving as an environmentally conscious alternative in the residence halls.

"We don't throw anything 'away,' " Taylor-Stanley said. "We throw it somewhere else. Let's make it somewhere good."

Reach reporter Vicky Yan at news@thedaily.washington.edu.