Week 3: New Criteria!

This week we met with Cheryl Bauer, the Associate Director of Sourcing and Sustainability at Dining Services to discuss in greater detail her criteria and vision for our composting project. There are a number of solutions we have encountered in our research and outreach over the last few weeks, all with different benefits and costs. It was essential for our group to clarify what was most important to the staff at our campus dining halls. Cheryl Bauer was particularly interested in opportunities for student engagement and education in the composting process. A great benefit of this project could come from changing student attitudes about waste issues at Notre Dame and in their own lives.

There are concerns that implementing a composting program at Notre Dame would require additional labour of workers in the dining hall. There is also a desire to implement the desired solution as soon as possible so another criteria to consider is simplicity of implementation.

Mrs. Bauer also alerted us to the fact that there are no current budget allocations in the dining halls that could fund our project’s implementation. She suggested we inquire about Green Loan Funds established through the Office of Sustainability as well as the renovation plans for North Dining Hall.