Compostech

By KRISTIN KAYE
Staff Writer of Niagara News

It’s not easy being green, but SAC is certainly going to give it a try. The Student Administrative Council (SAC) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, complete with cake and live entertainment, Oct. 3 to launch After Hours’ new initiative of using only biodegradable flatware and cutlery. SAC President Heather Minow was pleased with the overall attendance at the Welland campus event.

“We were looking for representation from a couple of different avenues, students, faculty. We had members of the NEC [Niagara Environmental Corps] present and we also had a couple of political representatives here to show their support for the cause.”

Clarke Bitter, president and CEO of the year-old company P&C Compostech, explains the options available for disposing of their products.

“Basically you have three options once you are finished. If you were to take it home from a restaurant, for example, put it in your green bin and let the Region pick it up, put it in your backyard composter and use it for soil for your own backyard, or landfill it. Landfill is the least attractive of the options. However, it does get landfilled and does still decompose in the landfill.”

Sean Kennedy, Niagara College vice-president of student and community relations, is also the executive liaison to the council and is proud to be associated with the NEC.

“I’m just always so impressed by the quality of our student government and the SAC staff. What I’ve seen in the three years I’ve been at the college is strong leadership and a willingness to try something new, and this is a prime example. The fact that they won the College of Ontario award last year for innovation is impressive. They should be winning the award again this year.”

Natelee Tokar, research project manager for the Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL) campus, tells of a waste audit and experiment that was conducted on the campus last year to promote waste awareness.

“The NEC determined that our main building alone throws away more than 1,000 Tim Hortons cups every day. ... We took all the cups and strung them up on the banister. It was a real visual impact for students, to see how much is wasted in just one day.”

Shannon Fletcher, co-ordinator for the NEC, says she was pleased to be invited to the event and expresses high hopes for involvement from NOTL.

“We’re hoping that since SAC has a compost program set up now that maybe we could get on board and start composting too on campus, which a bunch of our NEC students are interested in starting a project on. The Niagara Culinary Institute composts, but they are the only building at our campus to do so at this time.”

Since Niagara College is one of the first schools in the region to attempt this eco-friendly project with regard to food service, inquiries were made to see if any other businesses had decided to give it a try. According to Compostech statistics, the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf and Country Club and The Riverbend Inn, also in Niagara-on-the-Lake, are two places getting on board, and he is hoping that more food service businesses will join in.

“We’ve all driven down the street or walked the sidewalk and have seen a plastic knife or fork or a Styrofoam container or a beer cup. If those things are made from bio-based materials, it’s called a ‘cradle to cradle’ system. It starts out as soil, something grows in it, you turn that something into a product and eventually it becomes soil again.”

Minow is very pleased with the attendance at this event because it is the first public step from SAC with regard to environmental awareness, but it is by no means the last. There is talk of a larger step further down the road, but first more needs to be done at the college.

“We’re doing what we’re going to call an assessment and canvas the entire student centre/SAC office area, looking at what we can do to make it more environmentally friendly. We’re going to do this with the help of the NEC and figure out what sort of avenues are available.”

This week is Green Week for SAC, with daily activities planned, such as a No Utensils Day, when everything is edible using hands only, and for the entire week, all lights will be turned off to conserve energy. For more information, see the flyers posted around campus and drop by the SAC office to pick up a monthly schedule.