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Happy International Compost Awareness Week!

Check out these student-created videos about compost at UMBC

International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) is the largest and most comprehensive education initiative of the compost industry. It is celebrated nationwide and in other countries each year during the first full week of May. The goal of ICAW is to work together to raise public awareness on why we all should be composting our organics recycling and using compost. The program includes poster and video contests in the fall and activities and events held during the week in May. Throughout the week of ICAW, community, school, government and business events are held to encourage and celebrate composting - all types of composting – from backyard to large-scale. Learn more here.

Additionally, we'd like to share this collection of student-made compost videos!




Communications, Climate, Composting: A Video Project in Baltimore is funded through an Alumni TIES small grant from the U.S. Department of State and was led by Dr. Bill Shewbridge of Media & Communication Studies and Dr. Susan Sterret of Public Policy. In the fall of 2022 students in MCS 395 Television Production and MCS 495 Video Ethnography partnered with the UMBC Climate Action Steering Committee (CASC), and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT), to create a series of short videos on waste and composting. SBCLT defines itself as “working to create permanently affordable housing, development without displacement and zero waste in Baltimore.”

The Communications, Climate, Composting project (CCC) presents information about composting and climate, grounded in stories from community members who have been working on developing campus composting. The videos share stories of student reflections on composting on campus, along with those of  SBCLT and their efforts to bring a commercial composting facility to Baltimore. By telling these stories, the project hopes to educate the campus community about composting, and what’s being done to institute it at UMBC.

MCS 395

Colin Grayson, Will Henrickson, Lien Hoang, Andrew Hollander, Shahbano Hussain, Nick Ivey, Ben Magder, Ha Mang, Damilola Ojikutu, Lily Stevens, Kara Ung, Parker Vogel, Michael Washington

MCS 495

Tasayeh Nickens, Ruy Benfica, Matthew Green, Levi Lewis, Pranav Pigilam

Posted: May 8, 2023, 2:04 PM