West lafayette compost
The Greater Lafayette area is currently without a composting program for local residents. The EII composting team is working to assess the need for a program, as well as researching options that can be implemented within the next two years. With the help of our partner Bryce Patz (West Lafayette Neighborhood Vitality), we are working to bring a new level of sustainability to the Greater Lafayette area.​
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Stage in EPIcs design process:
Specification Development
Meet the team
Harini Radhakrishnan
Project Manager
Freshman
First Year Engineering
Elizabeth McNaughton
Design Lead
Freshman
First Year Engineering
Hyejun Jeong
Communications Officer
Project Archivist
Freshman
First Year Engineering
Luis Pinheiro
Financial Officer
Freshman
First Year Engineering
ABOUT OUR PROJECT
We are partnering with the city of West Lafayette to implement a food waste collection and composting system - specifically, we intend to design and construct bins where West Lafayette residents can drop off their food waste and develop a system of transport to bring said bins to West Lafayette Wastewater Treatment's anaerobic biodigester. Throughout this project, we are mostly working with Bryce Patz, the Neighborhood Vitality of West Lafayette, but we are also working David Henderson, the Utility Director at the West Lafayette Wastewater Treatment Plant, and the general populace of Greater Lafayette, as our project will affect the city as a whole.
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So far we have only identified the end goals of our project and the general path we want to head down, but before we can go forward, we need to conduct research on what the citizens of Greater Lafayette actually need in regard to our project through the use of a survey. This survey will tell us whether we need to focus on educating people about composting and reducing food waste, implementing a food waste collection system, or both.
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During Spring 2020, we intend to distribute our survey at three different farmer's markets occurring in Greater Lafayette: The Purdue Farmer's Market, the West Lafayette Farmer's Market, and the Lafayette Farmer's Market.
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For more information, check out our most recent design review here.