Southwestern University
IN-2: Innovation 2

SEAK (Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge) formed a compost subcommittee whose main focus was to revamp the composting program on campus. Those students collaborated on a grant that included the pedicab as its big ticket item ($2900) along with 50 composting bins and other marketing materials. A lot of the marketing plans and supplies were not implemented/purchased due to various unanticipated expenditures. SEAK collected five gallon buckets collected from HEB and McAlister’s Deli to serve as receptacles for compost in the commons. Students hosted Compost Tag on the mall with the idea of educating students on which items were compostable. Other educational outreach included two drum circles in the commons with distributed materials and students giving short spiels to people in the tray return area. The compost committee benefited from momentum surrounding the Brown Symposium in the spring of that semester (Back to the Foodture), and two paid student workers receiving funding from the symposium used a physical plant golf cart to collect compost daily from the commons. This model of collection continued until the end of the spring semester. The pedicab arrived in the summer of 2012 and was assembled by Physical Plant staff. Students became pedicabbers picking up compost from the dining hall (daily) and library coffee bar (weekly). We opened up the opportunity for any interested apartment residents to have personal compost bins by the end of the fall semester and used a listserv e-mail through Reslife to get the word out. Art Association contributed their time and energy to painting all surfaces of the pedicab with animals and vegetables. Several students were trained on pedicabbing so as to continue collecting in the spring semester ('13) and diversify the members involved. Garden student workers became the primary pedicabbers for that semester and have continued to do all of the apartment collections.