Sustainability at SLU: the good, the bad, and the potential

By Lia Basden

At Saint Louis University (SLU), a Jesuit institution with social justice values, sustainability can

be a hot topic. Sustainable efforts at SLU span departments and disciplines, often with many

kinds of SLU community members involved. But some think it is still not enough.

One such group, the environmental club Green Billikens, has been working on a composting initiative for the past year. Blair Valdes, senior environmental studies major and president of Green Billikens, said the initiative began after a group member noticed a few composting bins behind one of the dining halls on campus. She said the bins seemed to be contaminated with other sorts of waste, like trash and recycling.

Pre-consumer compost bins contaminated with non-compostable waste

“We all went together as a group, we went and saw the composting state and decided our university could do better,” Valdes said. The goal of the initiative, she said, is for students and faculty to have access to composting bins around campus that they can use to dispose of food scraps and other organic materials.

Composting is the process of organic materials decomposing into nutrient rich dirt, Valdes said. This is important because it keeps organic waste out of landfills where they are surrounded by inorganic materials, like plastic, and can’t properly break down. When these organic materials can’t break down, she said, they release methane, a greenhouse gas that is even worse than carbon dioxide. Because compost is so nutrient dense, it can also help revitalize dry dirt when it is put back into use.

According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a research and advocacy nonprofit that works to redirect waste into local sustainable industries, more than 50% of municipal garbage sent to the landfill is compostable. This compostable garbage includes food scraps, paper products, cardboard, and yard trimmings. Yet, because it is sent to the landfill with other materials, it never actually gets the opportunity to decompose and takes up more space in landfills.

Pre-consumer compost bins at one of SLU's dining locations

Jeff Macko, custodial and grounds services director for SLU, said that these bins Green Billikens noticed are pre-consumer composting and only intended for the use of the dining hall. This is different from what he would consider post-consumer bins that anyone could use. He said there is currently no formal way for SLU’s community to compost scraps from meals eaten on campus or cooking done in residential halls.

Valdes said there is large population of students on campus that support the idea of having access to composting. She said Green Billikens' executive board members often have students ask them about where they can compost on campus.

“There is an expectation, especially students who are coming from very west coast, east coast, or even liberal cities,” Valdes said. “They’re coming here and they’re experiencing a university that doesn’t meet their standards when it comes to sustainability.”

Valdes also said composting on campus connects back to SLU’s Jesuit values of creating well-rounded students.

Macko said post-consumer composting on campus is something that his team often considers but it would be a difficult service to actually get off the ground. He said that especially right now with scarce resources and labor shortages, it’s not likely to happen soon.

There is also the issue of composting bins being contaminated with other kinds of waste, Macko said.

“For every person that is committed to it, there’s three, four, five that aren’t,” Macko said. “From my experience in dealing with this for 20 plus years, I don’t see that we’re ready to make that next step yet. I don’t think that there’s the commitment.”

Other colleges that have post-consumer composting on campus have experienced these issues Macko worries about, even with certain methods in place to try and prevent it.

Angela Yokley, sophomore environmental analysis major at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) and vice president of advising for WashU's sustainability board, said that her organization oversees residential composting on WashU’s campus. Even though each student interested in composting must sign up to receive a composting bucket, she said contamination is still an issue they’re experiencing.

Recently, they’ve tried increasing their signage and making signage more clear to combat the contamination issue, Yokley said.

“That has helped reduce contamination but, still, not to the point where it’s meeting our goals,” Yokley said.

Nonetheless, Yokley said their residential compost program is beneficial. The biggest positive, she said, has been those involved in the program unintentionally educating others about how waste in general works and what they can do with their waste.

Green Billikens' flyer for a campus composting interest survey

Although the SLU community does not currently have access to post-consumer composting on campus, composting does still happen in a number of settings.

Macko said that one of the many sustainable efforts SLU’s grounds employees practice daily is composting their yard waste.

“We collect leaves, we collect spent annual flowers, tree trimmings, we chip them up, put them in a pile and let them compost,” Macko said. The waste is composted here on campus, he said, and then put back into the landscaping once it has decomposed.

Macko’s area also oversees and tracks the composting done in the dining halls.

Myron Bridges, operations director for DineSLU, said that COVID had a big impact on the sustainability efforts of the dining hall. Due to both CDC and county ordinances, only to-go containers could be used. Although students could still recycle their to-go containers when finished with them, their food scraps were not able to be composted, he said.

This year, however, Bridges said the dining hall was able to get back on track with their sustainability efforts and are back to composting student’s food scraps.

“Now everything goes down the conveyor belt and our team is trained to deposit all items in the right bins,” Bridges said.

Other sustainable efforts being lead at SLU

Beyond composting, SLU leads a range of sustainability efforts.

Macko said his employees try to work as sustainably as possible every day.

“We interject sustainability with what we do," Macko said. This includes taking sustainability into consideration when designing and constructing buildings, retrofitting buildings on campus with LED lights, and using reusable cloths instead of paper towels when cleaning.

DineSLU also has a sustainability intern, freshman environmental studies major Claire Lyons. Lyons said recently, DineSLU created and printed out posters to put up at SLU’s dining locations about how to recycle properly. This came, she said, after noticing how much recycling on campus is contaminated with food scraps or non-recyclable waste.

Lyons also said that in collaboration with SLU’s Student Government Association’s sustainability committee, DineSLU is working on a flatware rental program. The program would allow organizations on campus to rent plates and silverware for events and then return the dirty dishes to DineSLU. This, she said, would give campus organizations an alternative to using single-use flatware.

Still, Lyons said she feels like SLU’s sustainability efforts could be better. SLU used to have a department of sustainability, Macko said, but it was eliminated as resources got tighter.

“I feel like when budget cuts need to made, environmental programs are the first to go,” Lyons said.

Lyons said she thinks that small acts of sustainability on SLU’s campus are important because it can make the task of beating climate change seem less overwhelming. She said that small things individuals do can add up to make a big change.

Macko echoed this sentiment and said that sustainability is important everywhere, not just on college campuses.

“It’s a responsibility that we all have,” Macko said.