Service Learning at EDCC

By Brian Tran

My service learning was Trash Collection and Sorting at Edmonds Community College on Feburary 15th, 2017 from 2:30pm to around 5:30pm. It was really cold and windy and the rain was just coming down in sheets. The event was hosted by our very own Zach Bigelow. It was basically Trashy Tuesdays at EDCC except we didn’t just collect the trash, we sorted and collected data as well. I believe our goal was to collect data that could be used to fund a more environmentally friendly community. This means that it could be used to ask for a grant that gave more awareness to the importance of sorting trash as trash and compost as compost.

I’m sure everyone has seen these sorted bins in the cafeteria:

Our job was to change the bags out from the back and weigh them for initial weight.

We also collected the bags from these trash cans around campus:

After weighing, we would open the three types of bags up and sort the contents to see if they actually belonged there. We found dog poop, vape pen heads, lots and lots of sealed beverages that still had the beverage in them (you’re supposed to dump out the drink before throwing it away). Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of compostables in the trash bags. This project affects all animal life because when items that are compostable like food scraps go into the garbage, they are sent to a landfill to decompose, releasing the methane gas freely into the air. When they are put into the compost bin and actually dealt with correctly, they are sent to management plants that trap the methane gas and use it as a power source. I say only if they are dealt with correctly because my sister works at Katsu Burger, where there is a sorting station similar to the one here in the cafeteria. She told me that in the end, they just tell her to treat the compost and trash as trash, therefore rendering the sorting that people do useless. It makes me curious what they put the compost bins out for in the first place. At a local Taco Time, almost all the bins that you can throw stuff away at are labelled for compost, but hearing my sister talk about her job makes me wonder if they actually compost all of it. In their commercials, they talk about how they are environmentally friendly and so is their food, but is it all for show?

This service learning made me more aware of what composting actually did. The biggest piece of knowledge that I learned from this and use every time I go out to eat now is the fact that companies that make the utensils make them to be compostable. I have gone to eat a few times since I did the project and I have applied it to everyday life. I may only be one person, but if enough people were educated like this, imagine how much methane we could harness instead of letting it billow out of landfills.

Four Questions:

1. How many places that put out a compost bin actually compost?
2. Is it possible to put out more sorting stations around campus instead of those brown cans that take all types of waste?
3. How much of a difference are we making by sorting each trash bag?
4. How much more methane gas can we release until we reach a dangerous level on Earth? (I don’t think I want this one answered)