We've Expanded Beyond Campus!

Hi Everyone, Last Thursday (April 7) marked our first successful foray into the world of compost collection beyond the University of Arizona grounds. I received a phone call from Raging Sage's manager about an hour before my afternoon shift and Sarah and I were able to stop by on the way to the compost pile and pick up 182 pounds of coffee grounds! We've worked out a twice a week schedule to start with, every Monday and Thursday afternoon. I also hear from Maura that she has had success getting Wilko lined up!

We got funding!

So, a lot has happened since late February!

For starters our team traveled to Sierra Vista in the beginning of March to take a tour of their composting facility. They windrow compost landscape clippings from around the city. All the employees were very friendly and fed us a FREE lunch!

Compost Cats Team in front of The City of Sierra Vista's GIANT compost turner. This turner travels down the windrows turning the piles to increase aeration and moisture content.

Sarah and Alex standing near the screener that produces the fine textured compost.

If you want to learn more about Sierra Vista's composting program go to the following site: http://www.sierravistaaz.gov/department/division.php?fDD=18-251

Also, on March 8th our team was awarded a grant from the UA GREEN FUND for around $58,000. This grant will be used to continue our project next year! So, far this semester has been pretty successful!

Well, we will update you soon, thanks for reading.

We started composting!

Hi!

Sorry it has taken so long to update you! But this past semester has been really busy. Alex, Polly, and I have been running around campus trying to get all the details finalized to start composting at The University of Arizona. We added a new member to our team, Chet Philips: our graduate assistant for sustainability. He has helped us out so much and we owe a lot of our successes to him.

Here is a quick summary of everything that has happened in the past four months:

1. The compost project got approved! UA will compost pre-consumer food from the Student Union, green waste from Facilities Management, and horse manure from the campus farm. Our hard work and dedication was recognized in the Arizona Daily Wildcat:

http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/campus-dirty-dealings-1.1824299

Picture of Alex, Polly, and I at the Campus Agriculture Center - site for the university's windrow composting system.

2. We hired 5 student workers to collect the pre-consumer food waste from the union, transport it to the Agriculture Center, and maintain the windrows. Our new employees are Patrick, Jessica, Andie, Maura, and Sarah. We are very excited they joined our team!

3. On January 31^st, 2011 we started composting! We started collecting food waste from the union and facilities management dropped off green waste to the composting site. All the hard work paid off and UA became the first student organized and student employed composting university in the nation: how exciting.

Hope that gets you up to date and look forward to more posts (on a regular basis).

Thanks for reading!

Yay! Back to school...

Hi everyone,

I know this update is long overdue, but from now on, I promise that I will make at least one monthly update on this blog.

This year we have seen a decrease in team members :(. Lesley is at Tufts getting her vet degree and Miriam is busy getting a Master's in Teaching and being a great TA at one of the local middle schools. Ashton is in Chile, Marcos is graduating in December and Nikhil transferred to USC. Amy is working for a mine and Blake is busy with his fraternity. So now only Alex and I are left from the old team (we are co-PMs). However, we have a new team member, Rachel! Welcome Rachel, to our awesome composting team. So lets get on with composting...

First, our pilot compost windrow is definitely done and within the next few weeks we will send it into a compost testing laboratory to make sure that we won't kill any plants with our black gold. If the compost is good and well, and has a good ratio of nutrients, we will be giving some to the Garden Team from our mother group (Students for Sustainability, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ) and possibly giving some to companies that may be interested in buying our compost as sample compost.

Secondly, a very large change to the project is that we will now be doing only windrow composting. The higher uppers want to see us succeed at not using very expensive machinery first before they will approve of buying an in-vessel composter.

Third, because of the change from in-vessel composting to windrow composting, we will have to change and revise our business plan, proposal and executive summary. SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise at the UA) will also be helping us with editing the final drafts.

Lastly, many large companies are very interested in looking at selling our compost and if all goes well we will have our project up and running, hopefully by the end of the school year. This is our main goal for the year.

As promised...

Happy summer, everyone! Here is the link to the news story that Lesley and I were in, talking up Compost Go-Live and Students for Sustainability: UA students use compost to create garden gold

This aired last night (Tuesday, June 8, 2010) at 10pm!

Media BLITZ!

So I've been thinking. We need a name for the followers of this blog. Because I wanted to begin this post with something like, "Hello, [insert compost-related name for blog readers here]!" Unfortunately, I can't think of a cute, compost-related nickname at the moment. Someone come up with one, and you'll get a shout out and good karma and green love from all of us here at Compost Go-Live.

ANYHOODLE, the real reason I'm posting is because we got more media attention! As you can see from the post Polly published below, we got an article in the Daily Star! On that same day, we were ALSO on the radio for KUAZ's Arizona Spotlight! Here is the link to that, if you are interested in hearing us in all of our glory: http://radio.azpm.org/kuaz/podcasts/2010/4/30/azspotlight-sustainability/
Here are some pictures from that day:

Ashton and I pitchforking green waste onto the pile while the photographer from the Daily Star takes millions of pictures.

Amy and Ashton being photographed AND recorded AND doing both at the same time!

Alex, Marcos, and Polly brought more food waste to be dumped into our compost pile. Evan Pellegrino from KUAZ recorded everything!

Unmixed (to the left of the machine) vs. mixed (to the right) compost!

And, if all that isn't enough, we ALSO got filmed today to be on KVOA channel 4! The story should air sometime within the next two weeks, and I'll be sure to post a link to it here!

All of this attention is great for us because not only does it spread the word about our specific project, but also it spreads the word about compost and sustainability in general. This just proves to me that it IS possible to make a difference, no matter how small you start!

This has been a wonderful year, and I'm happy to have been a part of it. This summer, the four of us that are remaining in Tucson (Ashton, Polly, Amy, and myself) will be working on two projects: the RFP (Request for Proposal) process, and our compost pile at the ag center. Hopefully, by the beginning of next year, we will be on our way to purchasing our in-vessel system for the campus!

We got press!!

Check out the article the Arizona Daily Star wrote about our project.


http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/college/article_56812731-34ad-5032-8a86-4a0e7ac37026.html