Just last month, UW’s Housing and Food Services (HFS) representatives proudly added a compostable soda cup to their line of sustainable dining products.

The cup was requested from Coca-Cola with the hope that the UW would send about 150,000 fewer cups to city landfills each year. Yet despite HFS’s intentions, program organizers say the compostable products will not have their intended effect on the environment until cup users begin sorting them properly.

Ashley Rumble, director of UW Students Expressing Environmental Dedication (SEED), thinks the new cups are creating a new set of waste problems.

“As for the Coke cup’s conversion to being compostable, it has caused an influx in contamination because people are tossing the lids in with the cup; the lids are still not compostable,” she said.

Rumble explained that HFS and SEED members are now forced to launch “Lose the Lid,” a project that will educate students about putting lids in the trash.

HFS Project Manager Michael Meyering and HFS Capital Planning and Sustainability Manager J.R. Fulton recognize that student participation and understanding is a key determinant to the success level of UW’s composting campaign.

“Our challenge, without a doubt, is educating the entire campus community — students, as well as faculty and staff — that we are different from other food service operations,” the team wrote in an e-mail. “Compost bins are not available to customers in most off-campus restaurants. With our compost and recycling areas, we offer customers the chance to participate. We seek 100 percent participation and we will continue to strive for a zero-waste environment.”

In order for students to easily do their part, HFS has placed compost and recycling receptacles in each of the dining halls with signs noting which items should be placed in which bin. However, with new compostable items being introduced regularly, students are having a hard time keeping up with the changes.

“The ever-changing standard of compostables is one of the biggest challenges for SEED and HFS,” Rumble said. “It is difficult to tell a student her cup was trash yesterday, but it is compostable today, and expect her to understand and comply.”

HFS representatives agree and are working to make classification easier for students.

“Because the majority of products being offered off-campus are not compostable, we must make it easier to identify our products as compostable,” Fulton and Meyering wrote. “We will be introducing new items that are compostable that will be much easier to identify. The clear bioplastics (such as clear drink cups and salad containers) will soon have a brown band with the word ‘COMPOSTABLE’ printed on them.”

Additionally, HFS will soon release a new corn straw, compostable cutlery and paper food trays marked with a distinguishable brown design.

However, some students feel HFS may be addressing the wrong problem. Sophomore Marie-Anne Johnson claims it’s easy for her to tell which items are compostable; she said the difficulty lies in finding an empty receptacle.

“The problem is how fast the bins fill,” Johnson said. “That makes it harder to sort when you need to leave.”

Reach reporter Katie McVicker at news@dailyuw.com.