50K Coffee Cups Composted – What’s next?

We have been operating our coffee cups collection trial for two years now, after starting the initial trial back in 2014. Now the trial is at an end and we can report that we have diverted around 50,000 coffee cups from landfill, and sent them to be composted. This is great – but we still have a long way to go.

We will now be continuing with our coffee cup collection system, and hopefully expanding it so that there are more collection points around campus. We are also looking to shift from the current type of coffee cups to a version that is certified compostable, and we should see some advances in this area over the next 12-18 months.

We were very excited to see the on-site composting of food waste and coffee cups at the University of the Sunshine Coast in their OSCA – On-Site Composting Apparatus. This simple system makes it possible to produce a high-grade compost on site (imagine how this could aid the creation of an Edible Campus, for example!) and eliminate some of the forms of waste we currently struggle with at UC (especially food grade plastic packaging). Check out the OSCA here for some inspiration!

We do ask you to follow the instructions on the blue and other recycling bins on campus. We are noticing a lot of contamination in the bins (items in the wrong bins), and this means (for instance) that recycling is incorrectly and unnecessarily sent to landfill. We really need your help to reduce waste on campus!

This message was brought to you by the UC Sustainability Office. Connect with us through Facebook or Instagram. Or email us: sustainability@canterbury.ac.nz

Save

Coffee Cup Composting Trial Continuing in 2016!

After the success of last year, our collection of disposable coffee cups (in the blue bins) for composting is continuing this year! We will assess its progress at the end of the year. Last year we diverted over 15,000 cups from landfill with this service, a massive effort. And we reckon we could divert 250,000+ from landfill if we get this right. In 2017 we hope to expand this service to other forms of compostable packaging. This would enable us to get rid of certain kinds of disposable plastics from campus!

However, this will only be possible if the outcome of the trial is successful. And for this we need your help: success means contaminant free. So please tell your mates to use the Blue Bins but NOT to throw anything else in these bins (including food waste, plastic lids, bottles, cans, or ANYTHING other than empty coffee cups!). Why don’t we want other compostable materials in these bins at present (especially food waste)? Because we are still manually sorting the bins to check for contaminants, and going through decomposing food is pretty gross.

We also have a new addition to the team, Jessica Lunsford, who will be working on this with us this year as a Waste Assistant. Jessica has a Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Management, a Certificate in Organic Horticulture and is currently studying a BSc at UC.

Thank you for your help in this!!

For more information on the blue bin trial http://wp.me/p4A3Y6-bP

 

15,200 coffee cups turned into compost at UC!

Single use cups going into the HotRot facility

The Sustainability Office’s blue bin trial for coffee cup collection is going well. Between May and September, approximately 15,200 cups were diverted from landfill and turned into compost!! On the back of this, the numbers of blue bins through the campus will shortly be increased from the original four to nine.

As you may know, we are currently in Phase II of a campus wide coffee composting trial, to see if we can divert more waste from landfill by composting take-away coffee cups instead (take-away coffee cups can no longer be recycled L). All the cups collected in the blue waste bins are taken off-site for composting.

Some FAQs on the cup composting trial:

Please remember, the blue bins are for empty cups only (no lids!) and not for any other items!

If the cups are being composted, why can’t I put organic waste in the blue bins? At this stage in our trial, the contents of the blue bins are all being sorted by hand by a valiant student. This is so we can ensure quality control and provide accurate reporting. Sometimes the material sits around for a while before being handled, and it is not particularly pleasant to deal with rotting food.

Can I put other compostable packaging materials in the blue bins? Again, we are in a trial phase with this project at the moment, and we are focussing on a specific problem we have with takeaway coffee cups: that they can no longer be recycled. We need to keep the trial manageable at this stage to ensure its success.

Why not just use the green bins? The material that goes into the green bins is taken to a different composting facility that cannot handle coffee cups. Our coffee cup waste goes to the Selwyn District Council’s HotRot facility by Rolleston where they are put through a mechanical composting system with other compostable waste products and turned into compost for your garden.

What are the future plans for this project? We have implemented this blue bin in order to create the possibility of treating more of our waste as an environmental resource rather than a contaminant. We want to phase out certain kinds of packaging from campus (like plastic plates, sushi containers, plastic cups etc), but first we need to make it possible for compostable options to actually be composted. In time, compostable plates, cutlery and other food containers will all be able to be composted using the blue bins.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO KEEP THESE BINS CONTAMINANT FREE. THANKS FOR BEING SO EXCELLENT!

More exciting composting news:

The UCSA has their first ever batch of compost out of “Cloey”, their automated composting unit (see the pic, it is the white box :-)). This compost has been generated out of food waste from the UCSA production kitchens, and will be reurned to the soil via the UC community gardens, and used to grow more food for students! We are so excited. Well done, guys.

By Matt Morris – UC Sustainability Office

For more info on the composting trial, check out our earlier blogs about it: http://wp.me/p4A3Y6-8G or http://wp.me/p4A3Y6-6K

 

Composting Cups and Recycling at UC – April 2015

Welcome to the first UC “waste” update of the year in which we give you an update on the Compostable Coffee Cup trial we started last year and look at UC’s waste streams.

As you may remember, last year we trialled a ‘blue bin’ on campus to collect used single-use coffee cups, which we then took to Selwyn District Council to be put through their composting unit. The trial was successful and we have decided to expand it!

Look out for these posters, which are placed near blue bins around campus.

So, if you get single use takeaway coffee, put your cup in one of the blue bins that you will start to see more of around campus. And please please please, tell your mates NOT TO CONTAMINATE these bins! For the system to work, there must be no plastic or any material other than coffee cups. So no lids either.

The exciting thing is that this also means that we can now introduce ‘compostable’ cups to UC. Previously, these have not been acceptable because our green bins are sent to a compost plant that cannot deal with them, and they needed to go to landfill instead.

In time, we may well be able to expand the blue bin service to take other compostable items, and we are working on this. Exciting times!

We are very grateful to all the people who are using this blue bin properly – contamination rates have been very low and we need to keep it that way.

The Sustainability Office is also looking hard at our waste streams and recycling again. As predicted a couple of years ago, we are now facing more pressure around which items can be recycled and which cannot. For example, we have recently been informed that takeaway coffee cups lids are no longer recyclable 😦 This is the tip of the waste iceberg, and we’re looking for options.

Also, a quick thanks to everyone for their efforts during the CRT Amnesty in August this year. As part of the CRT Amnesty, old CRT monitors were collected from around the UC  campus and recycled, rather than sent to landfill! Many CRTs came in at the last minute; in total, 37 CRTs and 4 televisions were recycled at a cost of $789-00. This means that approximately 44 kilograms of lead was diverted from the landfill. A great result! Whoop!

To check out what else we do to create a sustainable campus, check out our website http://www.sustain.canterbury.ac.nz/#.

Composting Coffee Cups Trial: Chicken Carcasses and Coffee Cups

The Sustainability Office is always looking for new solutions to waste issues and has recently trialled Selwyn District Council’s “HotRot unit” to see if single-use coffee cups can be composted in this unit and it seems like they can!

How does the composting work? The cups are put into a pit and processed through a mechanical composting unit – The HotRot – which is an enclosed vessel with an auger. The cycle is 14 days and during this time the population of microbes escalates because they have so much food (not just the coffee cups but also chicken carcasses, YUM). All this activity raises the heat and accelerates the composting. At the other end brown composting material emerges, which can be used as garden compost!

Collecting the cups

Checking the bin content

Further testing was needed however, which is now underway. From September until November we are trialling a separate single-use cup collection system in the Undercroft and Café 101, so we are now two-thirds of the way through.

So far the trial has been a success. We have been looking at these things:

• What is the level of contamination in the blue hooded bins? In other words, is there anything else in there apart from single-use cups?
• Are people using the bins?
• How interested is the UC community in the bins?

We have found that there has been a low level of contamination, although in one area (the Undercroft), contamination is higher with some people not taking the lids off. Overall the bins are getting a good level of use, and we have already diverted over 2000 litres (by volume) of waste from landfill. This tells us that expanding the trial in 2015 would have a significant positive environmental impact!! We have also found that the UC community has been very enthusiastic about the blue bins and us taking positive action on coffee cups on campus, a bugbear for a number of years. Yay!

We will be doing a proper analysis in November when the trial ends. If all is good, we will be expanding the number of blue bins in 2015, and getting ready for a more significant change in how we do recycling in 2016.

Into the HotRot!

Checking the resulting compost

The blue bins finally make it possible for us to switch our cafes over to biodegradable packaging, which we anticipate happening in 2015 – if all goes well with this trial and the contamination remains low!!

So please note: these collection points are for empty cups only!! No pie wrappers or lids! Look out for the blue hooded bins and help us make the trial a success.