From Garbage to Gold: Lehigh's Composting System

I did my project on the Lehigh University Compost program, Garbage to Gold. It was started by two of my friends earlier this year and as a result, it has become a constant presence in my life. My sorority was actually the first place that the compost system was tested out, to see if it could possibly become a viable option. Although initially annoying and very time consuming, eventually we just got used to weighing the viable garbage, writing down the results and disposing of it in the designated bucket outback. Despite my house having gotten used to composting, and hearing about it all the time I realized that a large majority of Lehigh probably had no idea that any of this had been going on, so I felt it would be both an informative and interesting project for me to choose.

I went back multiple times, due to a variety of conditions ranging from the weather (which was not in my favor any of the days) to disrupted composting schedules and times due to pacing break and midterms. Despite taking numerous pictures each day, those conditions combined with the “torturous” terrain that comes along with composting, made very few of them viable. The decaying food, constant rainfall, and the bugs that came with, required me to utilize the camera’s zoom despite my best efforts to avoid it. Although I took pictures without the zoom and later tried cropping in, the objects often became grainy and lost their sharpness. Towards the end I tried to get a little bit more creative with my angles to make up for the problems with lighting and clarity that had hindered me from being able to take the compelling close-ups I had really been hoping to get. Despite my return visits, the weather had been especially fickle that week and there were only so many times that they were going up to Goodman campus to work on it. 

Overall I think that the interview and slideshow came out nicely. Although I wish I could have better focus and clarity in my images for one or two, I think I took advantage of the situations I did have, and made the most of them.