By Vic Cox

Sustainability is taking a variety of solid, if slippery, forms across campus as school and multi-departmental sustainability committees add composting of organic materials to their recycling tool kits.

Earthworms have well established composting value in several campus programs, such as with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Housing and Residential Services. Now vermiculture, as the process is known, is being enlisted in the battle to reduce waste in office buildings, with six-story Ellison Hall the latest addition.

Strategically placed departmental collection boxes with charcoal filters and tight lids gather the coffee grounds, orange peels, and apple cores in the first stage. Each box produces five to 10 pounds a week and is periodically emptied into special worm bins with four levels of filters.

The filters trap the animals’ droppings and decomposed organic detritus. The resulting fluid, which collects at the bottom of the bin and runs out of a spigot, is nutrient-rich “compost tea,” explains Katie Maynard, a sustainability coordinator based in the Department of Geography. The process produces no smells, she adds, but the filter trays require occasional cleaning.

Maynard and Eli Krispi, her sustainability intern, and various volunteers are in the process of implementing the Ellison Hall Recycling Plan, which unites the building’s occupants in a spectrum of recycling approaches. In addition to handling standard paper and plastic bottle waste, the plan recycles plastic film and electronic waste and conducts office cleanouts of recyclable materials when faculty members move.

Vermiculture is just the next stage in waste reduction, which Maynard and Krispi hope will help Ellison Hall achieve the status of a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building. Their efforts have already resulted in the Geography Department taking first place in the 2007 Associated Students Recycling Program’s Green Awards.

Such efforts across campus have been recognized with national awards beyond the LEED program. The National Wildlife Federation this month chose UC Santa Barbara as one of eight college ecology winners in its “Chill Out” competition to identify campuses that have “innovative programs to reduce the impacts of global warming.” It noted that UCSB reduced CO2 emissions by nearly 8,100 tons in 2006.

Practical experiences like the Ellison recycling program are a primary draw to California higher education’s annual conference on sustainability that again will be hosted in June by UCSB. The two-day conference boasts multiple sessions on the best practices available on college campuses for energy and waste reduction. However, May 15 is the deadline to receive a discount for early registration <http://geog.ucsb.edu/sustainability/conference2007/> to a conference that Maynard expects to have 800 participants this year.