Assessing the Infrastructure, Impact, and Partnerships for On-Campus Composting at UCLA

Solid waste management in the US is largely managed by transport via trucks to landfills. The majority of this waste is food waste and compostables. As the suburbs of Los Angeles spread from the city center, landfills too are pushed further out causing more extensive transport requirements, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and growth of the urban footprint. Additionally, landfills give off biogas as a result of the anaerobic degradation of organics as well as produce leachants into the surrounding environment. Although a better alternative, commercial composting facilities are also very far from the producers.

UCLA’s goal to send zero waste to landfill by 2020 is hampered by the lack of organics waste management on campus. By shipping organics to Victorville, the campus’s is generating greenhouse gasses and does not take advantage of the nutrients in the organics waste for on-campus use. This has financial implications where UCLA is paying to get rid of the organics and the revenue from the sale of its nutrients is left to American Organics. Bringing composting to campus poses its own set of challenges including: difficulty of enforcing proper organics separation across campus, dealing with “non-compostable” landscaping waste (pine needles and eucalyptus leaves), space considerations for installation of composters, and pushback from surrounding neighborhoods to any “waste-treatment” projects near their properties.

Our Leaders in Sustainability Project consisted of determining the feasibility of an on-campus composting system. This was conducted in several steps, first by identifying the green waste sources on campus and filtering out the cleaner nitrogen rich food sources, which are more readily processed in a campus scale composting system. From here space consideration as well as machinery and infrastructure for such a system was considered. This presented large challenges because servicing the green waste output of the dining halls alone is a massive undertaking. Once the appropriate space and equipment was identified, a cost benefit analysis involving the actionable reduced CO2 for composting on site as well as reduced fertilizer cost for on campus green spaces could be conducted. Findings were summarized in a comprehensive report and provided to UCLA Sustainability Officer Bonny Bentzin.

Based on the calculations done in this work, approximately 2,400 tons of compost would be produced annually. While we know that a portion of this could be used on many on-campus locations periodically throughout the year, a more detailed audit of the number and type of plants as well as their footprint and water requirements would need to be performed to calculate exactly how much. Additionally, as urban farming efforts increase, its reasonable that compost demand will also. Regardless, additional sites near to campus, including the VA garden, could be locations for compost use. Upon a preliminary search within a 50 mile radius, 6 potential partners were identified: Underwood Family Farms, Boething Treeland Farms, Christmas Tree House, Forneris Farms, McGrath Family Farms, and UCLA Santa Monica Research Station. Follow up analysis would involve determining which of these farms would be most interested in partnering with UCLA for regular compost pickup and the total compost they would require.