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Composting Outreach and Education- Team O

By

Jasmine Cummings, Derrick Wallis, Lexy Bailey, and Chyna Law.

EVPP 480

Semester: Spring 2021

George Mason University

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Introduction:

  • Composting on college campuses can potentially divert 12,490,240 lbs of waste from landfills (DEEP, 2021) (Richard, 1996).
  • Successful college composting programs, “Encourage teaching and Learning about a broad range of environmental issues,” (Colby, 2021).
  • Participation, student involvement, and greater accessibility and direction can all improve composting on campuses.

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Problem Statement(s):

There is a lack of education, organization, and resources available in regards to composting at George Mason University.

This problem is directly/indirectly related to SDGs, targets, and indicators:

  • By 2030: increase planning and waste management
  • Reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities
  • Provide universal access to green spaces, especially in public areas
  • Better the relationship between rural, urban, and suburban communities by growing food in urban spaces.

SDG “Go

al”

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Problem assessment: causes of problem

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  1. Lack of visible signage and direction at compost sites:
    • Previous signs were very small and hard to read.
    • Garden Staff relate that student do not follow proper instruction when composting.
  2. Lack of awareness of compost sites & where they are:
    • Over 73% of students were unaware of Potomac Heights (Paul, Tsoneva, 2020)
    • Over 74% of students were unaware of the Innovation Food Forest (Paul, Tsoneva, 2020)
  3. Lack of advertising and education to students/faculty about composting:
    • 74% of students were interested in composting, showing that if there was more awareness there could potentially be more participation.

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Original Action Plan:

Action Research Plan(15):

February 2021:

  • Determine composting information for our area and draft models for signage

March 2021:

  • Through the Patriot Green Fund, apply for a quick fund for the materials we need to build signs.
  • Contact Donielle and The Greenhouse and Gardens about signage and the sustainability website.
  • Create a survey on the student body.

April 2021:

  • Conduct survey.
  • With PGF money and volunteer help, build signage and collaborate with 480 composting superteam on where to install completed signage/information

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Action plan via milestones

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February

Planning:

Research various composting methods and information to promote on signage.

March

PGF:

Apply for funding through the PGF, get facilities approval for all of the needed materials and project ideas

April

Design and implementation:

Research, surveying, and design installation of informational signage

May

Outreach:

Promote composting efforts on campus through different media

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Action research options

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  1. Creation of better signage
  2. Survey of public awareness and outreach.
  3. Sharing of educational resources.

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Actions to collect and generate data to study-

Outreach:

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Surveys:

We surveyed 80 individuals associated with GMU, each answering 10 questions.

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Respondents were linked to additional resources after the survey.

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Signage:

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Potomac Heights Garden:

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Innovation Food Forest:

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Results: Over 80% of our respondents were undergrad students at Mason

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Compared to the demographic that 70% of Mason’s student body consists of undergraduate students(College Tuition Compare, 2019).

Survey Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcncKejucCBHLcu3i0U_EkO0N_8NyHidlVnl_10tncM_KnqA/viewform?usp=sf_link

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Majority of the students were Sophomores:

The lack of students in over 5 years is accurate to the fact that over half of the student body graduates within 6 years, and GMU has a higher than average retention rate (College Factual, 2019).

However we likely did not receive enough freshman or senior responses.

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We did not receive enough diversity in majors:

The top three majors of our respondents were The College of Humanities & Social Sciences, College of Science, & Volgenau School of Engineering.

Meanwhile, the top three degrees given from GMU are Criminal Justice, General Psychology, and Information Technology. (Data USA, 2019)

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We did not receive enough male respondents:

Over half of our respondents were female, even though men consist of 51% of the GMU student body (US News, 2021).

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Race & Ethnicity:

48% of our sample was white, 13% of our sample was Black/African, 15% of our sample was Asian, and 16% of our sample was Latino.

Compared to the demographic that 43% of GMU students are white, 11% Black/African, 18% Asian, and 14% are Latino (Data USA, 2019).

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Awareness:

Our results confirmed the fact that about 75% of students are unaware of composting on campus.

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Outreach:

Our sample stated that Online advertisements were most effective (29%), followed by physical advertisements (21%), Online Resources (17%), and Physical Seminar Events (13%).

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Effectiveness:

About half of our respondents found our sign design informative on a scale of 1-5, 1 being most informative and 5 being least informative.

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Conclusion:

  • With half of students finding our signage informative, there will likely be an improvement in the quality of compost and proper composting on campus.

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  • However, majority of students are still unaware of composting resources on campus, this is especially concerning since our sample consisted of science and STEM majors.

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  • George Mason University could generate more compost on campus if more students were aware of the programs on campus.

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Challenges Faced:

  • COVID-19 presented many challenges for our group, since we were online and not all of our group members were on campus. This created difficulty accessing the compost sites and planning time to implement signage.

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  • We also struggled to find funding, our initial PGF fund was denied and we struggled to find other funding within our time constraints. We had to fund the final signage ourselves. Additionally communication between Donielle and facilities was not timely enough to fit within the constraints of this semester long project.

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  • Outreach “campaigns” are ineligible for funding through PGF and many other avenues, so we were unable to truly address the root cause of the lack of composting awareness on campus.

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  • The multi-faceted issues around composting on campus made it difficult to focus on one specific problem for the whole semester.

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Lessons learned

  • Teamwork: New ideas and work always help the efficacy of a project.

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  • Time: Many funding avenues do not fit a semester time constraint.

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  • Ingenuity: Although there are many challenges, nothing is impossible and there is always something can be done to impact the issue.

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  • Perseverance: Never give up on your project goals.

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  • Adaptability: We often had to change different aspects of our project to ensure that we found success and completed our installation on time.

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Next steps

  1. Upkeep of existing and future signage

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  • A follow-up survey to gauge the success of our signage

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  • Increase amount of signs to cover more area

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  • Increase awareness of composting on campus

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Recommendations

  1. Expansion of detailed signage around current and future green space.

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  • Update campus websites with more detailed information, & share this information to students.

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  • Place flyers in dorms, administrative and other buildings around Fairfax campus.

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  • Expand & improve composting infrastructure and bins on campus.

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References

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