During the first week, we will email the SUSTAINS leader and create a mini survey for morrill students on composting. We will also buy candy to bribe students to answer our survey.
In the second week we will conduct the survey outside of Morrill.
In the third week we will analyze our survey results to see the general consensus towards composting on campus
In the fourth week we hope to meet with SUSTAINS and discuss how we can move further in the next school year.
I was very inspired by the Columbus businesses that were presented to us. I felt engaged with the goals of Hot Chicken Takeover. It was amazing to see how he is able to make a difference in those peoples lives. The type of faith he has in individuals is honorable and he is changing the paths of people. I also enjoyed learning about the Roosevelt Coffeehouse. I was a little more unclear about his vision or I just wasn’t as engaged. My issue doesn’t relate in the same format that these business operate. Price farms, the business we want to work with benefits the community more by diverting waste from landfills and then they profit by selling their mulch/compost. Additionally we should think of ways to reduce waste on campus in the first place. We can also consider ways to create awareness in the Columbus community. Especially with the issue of Rumpke becoming too expensive. The community as a whole should be moving toward reducing waste and making it easier for citizens to participate. My biggest takeaway actually came from the ted talk for hot chicken takeover. I found the owner’s efforts and passions to be really inspiring. He was able to combine the things he is good at and help others achieve their dreams. To take action on this issue, we will try to increase the volume of composting around campus and move the program forward. It would benefit Ohio State if we could utilize our own waste in on our farms and landscaping.
A social enterprise organization works like a non-profit in that its mission is to increase social welfare in someway but they do so through their business. From the Social Enterprise Alliance website I learned about the different ways social enterprise can work. For traditional businesses, social enterprise enable a company to integrate social impact into business operations and prioritize social goals alongside financial returns. Social enterprise helps fill the void between traditional approaches that have focused on creating only social impact or financial returns. Price Farms, the business that currently works with OSU is considered a social enterprise. They provide Central Ohio residents and businesses the opportunity to recycle organic materials to produce compost, soil and mulch. They turn materials otherwise destined for a landfill into a product that people can purchase. This has benefited OSU by making our footballs games zero waste. They can then sell our compost for $40.00. Another example is Terracycle, a company that upcycles packaging and other non-recyclable consumer waste, keeping it out of landfills and turning it into new products. Today, Terracycle has established a recycling network resulting in more than 3 billion units of garbage averted from landfills and transformed into new, 100% recycled products. To address this issue we can work with Price Farms to compost our waste and then we can use the product on campus for the gardens and the farm. The challenges that exist may include transportation of the waste to the farm and how cost will play into all of this. It is to my understanding that OSU gets their compost back from Price Farms without any cost. Viewing my issue through this lense, the key consideration is whether osu will receive their compost back allowing our university to save money while also diverting waste from landfills. The first level would include purchasing from businesses that have a social oriented mission. Relating to our issue, this could include trying to buy goods that use recycled materials or buying things second-hand or simply repairing/modifying clothing or other items instead of purchasing new. The second level would include organizing to collect people’s waste. This falls in line with our goal to extend compositing across campus and encourage students to participate. The third level explores why we have so much waste going to landfills. Through compost and only utilizing re-usable and compostable packaging, we can eliminate the amount of waste produced on campus. Another question I have includes the issue of recycling in Columbus. We have plastic cups that can be recycled but Columbus doesn’t actually take them. In addition we have some compostable cups from world centric. So why is it that we aren’t utilizing all of their products. Once we get to the point of actually composting this packaging, hopefully we can find a way to purchase only compostable materials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw8HU9FTVZ4
This ted talk is a little different. It doesn’t deal with compost directly but the speaker discusses the issue of food waste in supermarkets alongside the fact that their a millions who don’t have access to food. He co founded a social enterprise that turns surplus into commercially viable snacks. The profits generated benefit charities working to eliminate this issue of food poverty. My biggest question was wondering how deep the charities will effect the root issue.. “Why is their food poverty?”