It just makes me feel happy. I know I'm not creating ways when I calculated the fact that we had composted 640 gallons of compost in a quarter and a half, basically. That was so exciting. Like, I would go compost and the bucket would be full.
From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Adina Sanchez-Godola. This is Enu Declassified, a podcast that takes a look into how wildcats thrive and survive in Northwestern. That was our Western graduate and founder of CATSU Compost, Ela Devote. Devote came up with the idea for CATSU Compost during her quarter abroad in Denmark and started the organization during the fall of her senior year.
She saw how difficult it was to make environmentally friendly decisions. I think I was first really exposed to it when I was studying abroad in Copenhagen. I was living in just an apartment building with a lot of other international students, but just to take out the trash, there were like six different bins. During the pandemic, Devote started composting in her home.
Once she got to campus, she wanted to start composting in her apartment, but it was more difficult than she anticipated. The apartment building that my roommates and I lived in didn't really have a space where we could keep a bucket, you had to keep it outside. There's all these rules. It just wasn't really feasible, and also there's an out of charge, which isn't always possible for students living off campus.
CATSU Compost took off the winter quarter of Devote's senior year. As a center for Jewish life on Northwestern's campus, a poster about starting to compost. Because we were still remote, everything had to be outside, and there was no regular meetings and regular club activities, that kind of stuff, so they were looking for just new ways to engage with people within the Northwestern community that they normally wouldn't in just another way to create community on such a virtual campus. And so I was like, hmm, I can have Hillel, a place where we can do composting, they would also pay for the service, and students could compost or free, and that's kind of how it started.
My name is Arthur Lubbovitz. I am a junior studying learning and organizational change. Lubbovitz is the current CATSU Compost community engagement head. He joined the organization through Hillel.
He said he admires how CATSU Compost makes composting easier for students. I definitely think when you understand and realize that composting is super accessible here, and I say super accessible, which is a bit of a stretch, but I mean, it's like a 10 minute walk. CATSU Compost had difficulty increasing engagement, because fall 2020 was when COVID-19 regulations at Northwestern were still very strict. Devote wants the initiative by starting an Instagram page to get more students aware of the issue on the composting location on campus.
It kind of started to pick up on its own, I was posting my content about how composting is really great for the planet. Like, there's so many stats that are honestly mind-blowing, so like these crazy facts, and it's like so easy, and it was so easy on campus, and it was also right by where we were all getting tested twice a week. Northwestern graduate student and CATSU Compost member, Natalie Myron, is one of the first people Devote mentioned having support for CATSU Compost. Myron grew up recycling and composting at home, so when she got to Northwestern as an undergraduate student, she was already composting often before finding out about the organization at the end of her third year.
I was living off campus and looking for a place to dot my own compost at the time I'd been putting it in the freezer and taking it home occasionally. I hadn't been wanting to pay 30 bucks a month to get the pick up. So there were a few students, a small group of us, who had this similar interest in creating composting services, and we came together, officially have only been a registered student organization for six to eight months, I believe. Once people started finding out, Devotee remembered having to get more buckets because they were already overflowing with compost.
She also started receiving messages asking about the bins, and became really excited. CATSU Compost was finally taking off. We'd created like 640 gallons of waste that was being composted, rather than putting the trash, which was really exciting. I was getting Facebook messages and Instagram messages from grad students, and they were like, can we use the bucket?
But how does composting work on Northwestern's campus, and how is CATSU Compost helping? Kelly Tidal and I am a sophomore this year. I got involved with CATSU Compost really on my first year, so last year. Tidal's friends referred her to the organization, knowing she was an environmentalist.
Now, Kelly is in charge of internal outreach at CATSU Compost. She typically organizes events with different clubs and student organizations. For example, we did a crossover event with Wild Birds in the very club on campus, so we did a pop-in event with them, and then we're also trying to get composting bins in sorority houses and fraternities houses. Tidal said that a lot of people don't know what is compostable.
Everything that's food-based, you can compost, so that's the easiest thing. If you want to get into the mini-gritty, there are a lot of things that you wouldn't necessarily think of, but all you have to do is figure out who your composting provider is, because your providers want to have a different set of rules, just with what they can handle, go to that page or what page or something, figure out what they take, and then go from there. But for example, a lot of people don't know that you can compost newspapers and cardboard and things like that. So I haven't said that there are many ways a person can compost.
In general, with composting, there are a few different levels. You have your traditional backyard composting where you might do stuff with worms and fruits and veggies. What Cat2Compost offers is industrial-level composting where you can compost things like dryerland and bones. We collaborate with an organization based in Evanston called Collective Resource Compost, so they pick up compost on a weekly basis from our sites.
Prior to the existence of Cat2Compost, if I wanted to engage with their services, I would maybe look into a monthly subscription where I pay some of money to get my bucket of compost pick up. But for students who are on a tight budget, it's not the nicest option. People have recommended having your own composting bin with a sealable lid. It can be anything from a mason jar to a ziploc bag.
This can be put in a freezer so that it doesn't smell. Every week, collective resource can pick up the compost. Myron is now one of the leaders of Cat2Compost and is in charge of the drop of sites. Currently, they have three, but are hoping to expand.
The first original one, and also our largest, is located directly behind Halal. You can access it through the alley. There are about four or five composting totes that were that's used by collective resource. We also have bins up behind the Shiel Catholic Center, which is a few blocks north of Halal, and then a bin behind University Christian Ministry, and that is a few blocks south of Halal.
We also are only able to place them on property that the university does not directly hold, so that's why we're based out of these sort of religious centers, not necessarily because we have a direct tie to them in our programming or anything, but they have graciously hosted us in our bins. Since it's founding, Cat2Compost has hit a few bumps in the road. Myron said it was hard to establish themselves as a registered student organization or RSO on campus because the university already had a program running. Prior to establishing this organization, I really didn't see much dialogue or any services really centered around composting on campus.
We had an idea that they composted on the back end in the dining halls, but oftentimes I can very well stop working, and I would just personally see so much food waste and up in the trash. From my understanding, we're not able to put these bins on campus grounds because the university has their own waste management collection system services that this would not fall under or either be supported by or some sort of just regulation in the way where we would need to house our very large bins on other private property. Even though Cat2Compost has made progress, Lebowitz feels the university still has a long way to go in terms of sustainability and composting. I want to rail on the university, this is not to take this place stinks, there's no sustainability efforts going on because there are.
I just think that this is such an obvious one to all of us in the club, and we're just bewildered that there hasn't been anything in the university knows that we exist, but they're still not trying to reach out to be like, hey, how can you help out? I think that's the whole point of institution like this is to be helping out student initiatives. I'm not even trying to say we're above an ASE level, but those funds should be for student orgs that are building community. This is for like a necessity in the community.
In order for the Northwestern community's lifestyle to change, Lebowitz said there need to be more institutionalized approach or more resources available to students. It is one of those like things like you can give someone like a fish or you can teach them how to fish. Well, it's like we can teach people how to fish, but if they're going to be like a lake and we can't build a pond, you know, we don't have the resources to be doing that. We want teachers to make people to fish into like compost, but that's been our biggest hurdle I think.
Even with all the setbacks, Lebowitz still supports any Northwestern movement about living a sustainable lifestyle. He just wished they were more committed to the cause. Composting is a wave. It's just, it's happening around the world.
I mean, California just legalized it within like the state and for Northwestern to be seen as this one of the most prestigious universities in the world and to not be encouraging their students behaviors to also change to me is just tough to wrap my head around. And I know that sustain and you is like providing many like opportunities and resources and like there's this whole like sustainability conference. I think that's the ice and that's like happening next week. So there are there are events going on.
It's just in terms of like specific behavior, like walking the walk. Title recognized that practicing sustainability is not an easy thing. She called it a lifestyle change that requires effort and a mentality to accomplish. While getting into composting can be a big change for some in their routines, title emphasized how rewarding can be for yourself and the environment.
I think it can be difficult for a lot of people who have never done anything like this before and especially as college students like we're all really busy and it just seems like another thing on the to-do list but every little thing counts and then as soon as you do one thing like I said, it's a domino effect. So you start composting and then you start thinking about other ways that you can do carbon impact and things like that. So it just kind of builds from there. She's searching for ways to reach beyond the typical audience of cats who compost.
I think that for all of Northwestern sustainability initiatives, it's usually targeted towards the same people. You know, the people that take environmental science classes or things like that. And so I feel like we're missing a large birth of Northwestern sustainability population. However, Marvin said since starting Cats Who Compost and becoming an official registered student organization in spring quarter of 2021, she has already seen the growing demand for composting services around campus.
We've seen a lot more interest both in general community members. We now have a roster of 200 or so folks who receive our monthly newsletters and who show up to events and who use our free compostable bin liners and other materials. But we're also like tangibly seeing interest because our bins are full every single week and often overflowing. We have these great photos of compost lily spewing out of our compost bins.
When looking towards the future of Cats Who Compost and composting at Northwestern, Levovitz also talked about some of the organization's goals for the future. The goal should be for the university as an institution to be implemented compost as many places as they can. And Cats Who Compost, our responsibility is no longer to be fundraising for bins or anything. We are now going to be the facilitators of composting and people.
I feel like there's so much room to grow in terms of how to really be influencing people's behavior. And I think that, yes, composting is our mission, but it's really like a zero waste club of how can we really not just mitigate our waste, but just shrink it as far as we can. From the Daily Nerf Western, I'm Adina Sanchez-Córula. Thanks for listening to another episode of Eddy to Classified.
This episode was reported and produced by me. The audio editor of the Daily Nerf Western is Lawrence Price. The digital managing editor is Ann D'Amelint et al. And the editor-in-chief is Jacob Fulton.
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