The Green Gorillas, a team of students at Skyline College, is conducting a composting pilot program in the Building 6 fireside dining room through the month of March to demonstrate the convenience of composting and to educate the campus community on why recyclable and compostable materials should be diverted from the waste stream.
Landfills are the largest source of methane emissions in the San Francisco Bay Area, accounting for almost half of the region’s total methane emissions.1 Methane, a greenhouse gas, is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat within the atmosphere.2 Reducing the growth of landfills by recycling and composting is therefore an important step in mitigating global climate change.
The Green Gorillas are doing their part by educating the campus community on the need for composting at Skyline College. Part research project and part peer-education campaign, the composting pilot program will determine how much waste from the dining hall and adjacent restrooms can be diverted from local landfills and identify potential cost savings for the college.
For more information about the Green Gorillas program, or to find out what you can do to improve waste diversion on campus, please contact Richard Hsu, hsur@smccd.edu.
1Source: Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Source Inventory of BayArea Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2010
2Over a 100-year period. Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, 2013
Article by Richard Hsu
