Goshen College’s sustainability department recently expanded its composting initiative to the Octavio Romero Student Apartments. After a handful of apartments started a trial run of the program in February,  a communicator announcement was released on March 26 inviting all other apartments to participate.

Composting has already been made accessible at East Hall, the Good Library, Java Junction, the Science Building, Howell House and the Administration Building. 

As of now, four apartments are a part of this new installed system. Kevin Liddell, a senior physics major, started the initiative in his residence. “The earth as a whole gives us everything, and I think it’s important to give back at least in the little ways that I can,” he said.

Liddell commented on the practicality of it. “Composting is not very hard, especially having the service they offer here where they collect and dump it for us. My advice for students would be just go for it, there’s not much involved, you just need to take the first step,” he said.

Leading the initiative is Isaak Prince, a sophomore sustainability major and business minor. Prince is currently the sustainability student assistant and is the one responsible for the composting system in the apartments.

“I played an important role in expanding this program by writing these emails, ordering more buckets and setting them up,” said Prince.

For the apartments, Prince sets a composting bucket outside their doors. The students take their buckets and use them throughout the week by putting their compost inside. Then, every Tuesday, Prince goes around collecting the buckets and swapping them for clean ones. 

“Once I have everybody’s compost buckets, I go out to the campus composter in front of [Physical] Plant and dump the compost there. I then wash out the buckets for us to reuse them next week,” he said.

Dan Barwick, the sustainability coordinator at GC, spoke on the challenges that the project brings. “I think the biggest challenge is just getting students to do it. The process itself is super easy, we come get it, we do all the work, you just throw your stuff in there,” he said.

Besides the obstacle, Barwick highlighted the importance of the initiative. “There is always just the huge benefit of not having stuff being thrown at the landfill. The amount that you can not send there is always going to be beneficial. It’s a small thing that if we give it enough time, it could become a soil and be used on campus again,” he said.

From July 2024 to July 2025,  the campus composting program, not including Westlawn, has gathered 835 lbs. of compost. However, Barwick is still looking for ways to foster greater student engagement.

“There are three more apartments that have emailed us wanting to start composting too. We will get those new buckets as soon as we can.” he said.

Barwick and Prince are also looking at implementing the project in other GC buildings like the Union Building and Newcomer Center.

“If we could get more students involved and share the workload where Isaak has to spend four hours every week just collecting compost, it would be so much easier,” said Barwick.

Thinking ahead, Prince spoke about his hope for the future of the sustainability efforts at GC. 

“I envision it being a priority … It will take a lot of great minds to think about it, but I believe if we continue to treat it as one of the college’s values, there is potential for a great change to happen.”

On Thursday, a new sign-up form in the communicator will be available for apartment residents to join the project.

Isaak Prince collects compost buckets every Tuesday from the apartments.