About
SCRAP is Brown’s student composting group geared towards increasing composting education, awareness, and practice throughout the Brown and Rhode Island communities. Our mission is to provide students with a campus-wide composting system, thereby completing a zero-waste food cycle throughout Brown’s campus. Compost is vital because it not only diverts food from the landfill, reducing methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, but it also can be used as a natural fertilizer, avoiding the need to use heavy Nitrogen-based fertilizers. A 100% natural process, composting is an integral part of how we acquire our food and how we dispose of it in a sustainable fashion.
History
SCRAP was founded in Spring 2010 by a group of four students from all aspects of environmental activities going on at Brown. Between the Sustainable Food Initiative, emPOWER, and the Food Sustainability Intern at Dining Services, SCRAP kicked off with a bang. Originally geared towards implementing composting on the institutional level, SCRAP has since shifted its focus to supplying a means of composting for students living both on and off campus. In our first semester, we often met with Dining Services and Facilities to discuss the feasibility of establishing a composting system for the Dining Halls and Grounds. After months of debate, composting seemed like it would never happen. However, when the 2010/2011 academic year started, SCRAP took a new turn, and composting once again seemed possible. Looking into building composting bins around campus, we began brainstorming means of funding and ways of networking on campus and around Rhode Island to show exactly why compost is so important!
Projects
Since Fall 2010, SCRAP has gained recognition both on Brown’s campus and in the Rhode Island community. We built our first bin at Hillel, and we are now running a pilot program to see how to best provide a means to compost for the whole Brown community. We plan on submitting multiple grants to Brown’s Sustainability Fund in order to build more compost bins around campus. Depending on how successful our first bin is, we are hoping to have compost bins strategically location throughout campus, starting with a bin near Machedo (a dorm on Brown’s campus).
Join us every Saturday at the Farmers’ Market at the Hope St. Village in Pawtucket from 10 AM to 1 PM. In addition to the exciting activities going on around campus, we also work with EcoRI and Farm Fresh Rhode Island to both raise awareness about compost and to provide a means for the Rhode Island community to compost at this weekly event. SCRAPers attend the market every Saturday, handing out SCRAP composting pamphlets and overseeing the compost bins at the Farmers’ Market.
Contact
For more information about SCRAP, contact Lilly at compost.with.scrap (AT) gmail (DOT) com.
