Gorilla Composting at McGill University

Composting, says the Gorilla Composting mission statement, "is a necessity and a responsibility".

The group, founded by biological engineering alum Daniel Spitzberg and Kealan Gell, has created an organic recycling program for McGill University. The proposal involves providing interested students, faculty, and staff with personal compost containers and scheduled drop-off times to bring their organic waste to a campus composting facility...

The facility, once fully realized, would provide a source of soil nutrients that could be put to use on the campus. If you're in the area and are interested in getting involved, find more info on Gorilla Composting membership here. If you aren't nearby but you're still interested in composting at home, the group offers some great helpful tips for composting at home and how to get started.

Comments (9)

Wait, they're composting gorillas?

posted by Pretentious on February 27th 2009 at 3:48pm
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Seeing as this was started at a university, one can only hope that the choice to use "gorilla" instead of "guerrilla" was intentional rather than an example of the sorry state of education in this country.

Kudos for the composting...

posted by LilyC on February 27th 2009 at 5:41pm
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actually, McGill is in Canada. and given the gorilla in the logo, i think it's safe to say they were being funny, not stupid.

posted by chambrey on February 27th 2009 at 5:56pm
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Let's hope.

posted by Pretentious on February 27th 2009 at 6:48pm
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So folks, hopefully these words are the same in "American" as they are in "Canadian":

guerrilla: a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment

gorilla: The largest of the anthropoid apes native to the forests of equatorial Africa

In fact, the logo attempts to be bilingual, as McGill is in Montreal - more francophone than anglophone - and gorilla (english) and gorille (french) are very nearly the same.

posted by joathome on February 27th 2009 at 8:26pm
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I teach fifth grade at a Title 1 school. Breakfast is served to all daily. I keep a covered container in my classroom for the apple cores and banana peels. My students love going green.

posted by scootergirl on February 27th 2009 at 11:19pm
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duh...

it's called A PLAY ON WORDS

An aspect of WIT

(what a sorry state of education is in when this has to be spelled out for people...)

posted by mschatelaine on February 28th 2009 at 3:21am
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Tried to write "what a sorry state education is in if this has to be spelled out for people...."

--my 2 year-old pressed the enter button before I was done

posted by mschatelaine on February 28th 2009 at 3:23am
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@ mschatelaine, thanks for seeing through the mist to the real gorilla name.

To clarify: we chose "gorilla" because of its brandability, but the name actually originates from a student who, furious at the irony of having no composting options out at McGill's esteemed agriculture and environmental campus, he joked that he would go about 'guerilla composting' by dumping his organic waste in the faculty members' backyards.

6 months later, we wrote a proposal and business plan and started hauling in tons and tons. The best part -- students could bring organic waste from their apartments (85% of students live off-campus) to our drop-off spot.

posted by stationaery on March 8th 2009 at 5:15pm
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