Pitt Composting

Pitt Composting is my latest endeavor with fellow Pitt Engineers Drew Gawronski and Juno Noel-Brown. Our idea is to limit the amount of food waste produced in Pitt dining halls by motivating students to compost their food instead of throwing it all away. While we all contributed ideas to every prototype, we each chose one to focus on. Juno's focus is prototype one, Mine is the second, and Drew's is the third.

Prototype 1 - Composting Bin

Our first idea includes a double lid design to prevent smells from leaking out.  However, as many commented, it would be challenging to keep clean and the bin would fill up quickly with the double lid limiting compost capacity

Updated design includes no double lid just a single rotating lid like those on mailboxes. Would also include a weight sensor at the bottom of the bin to allow the second prototype to work

Prototype 2 - Composting Leaderboard (My main contribution)

These are the composting leaderboard which will keep track of personal and campus participation to motivate student to participate. Initially this was a local website I made that held personal data but wasn't back to anything - this means people who visit can't see what others have entered 

By coding and connecting the website to a google sheet, information could now be stored and viewed by all who visit the website

This is the final product which not only included dorm and individual data, but also campus progress towards the biweekly goal of 1000 lbs and visual of how much each dining hall composts. To prevent cheating there is a built-in mechanism into the website to lock the name and dorm after one input and limit the number of daily inputs to 5. 

Ideally, when implemented into campus, we wouldn't have personal input. There would be a weight sensor in the bottom of the composting bin to measure the difference, then students would scan their school id, and their information would automatically appear on the leaderboards.

Visit the website to try it out ^

Prototype 3 - Composting Club

This composting club would host composting events and be in charge of spreading awareness about composting. There would most likely be service hours included to help motivate students to participate. This would also help students learn how to compost since contamination is a big issue and one of the main reasons lots of compost gets wasted.

Our Hope