Does Massey want to compost?

In week one of semester two the Recycling at Massey team completed a trial of having compost bins placed in various locations around the Massey Wellington campus (The Pyramid, The Lounge, Co-Lab kitchen, Block 12 D Floor kitchen, and Block 1 CMP kitchen).  

5 plastic square storage bins with lids and a set of 20 compostable bags were purchased for the team to use in the trial. Lisa Slade (Campus Operations) was collaborated with to make sure the cleaners and appropriate Massey staff were aware of the trial and it was okay to do the trial in the selected locations. 

The team drew up a proposal prior to the trail stating what they hoped to find out and the trials restraints.

The trial provided interesting insight to the need or even desire to compost organic matter. Both the compost buckets in the Co-Lab kitchen and the Lounge kitchen were used most. The buckets in Block 12, Block 1 and The Pyramid were hardly used. The project team will be doing a SWOT analysis of the trial, and extended the trial into week two to find out if it makes a difference in the usage. 

The Recycling team was asked to think about their next steps, Facilitator recommending a proposal to be written up for the university when they approach re-looking at their recycling within the next year. The team also said they would trial putting signage on the bins in D floor, Block 12 to see if they could encourage people to recycle correctly with no contamination. 

​The team also hosted a talk about recycling by Waste-Ed last Thursday (26/07/28) in Block 12, Gallery C space. There were probably about 15 attendees, almost half were staff. The talk shed insight into what can be recycled and alternatives that exist to non-recyclable objects. We will get a summary from the Recycling team about how the event went when we next meet with them.