Why does SLC (Sarah Lawrence College) Say We Need Insurance to Sell Compost?

On the insurance, one thing I do not understand about insuring compost sales at SLC is if students can sell baked goods at SLC without using insurance and customers are actually eating these things then how can compost, an item that is not even going to be consumed going to prove a liability in comparison to other clubs that have made sales or even at the teahaus which sells baked goods. Yes AVI and farmers at Farmers' markets have insurance on their food sales but they are much larger scale yet student clubs doing bake sales don't need insurance so why should compost clubs need to do so? Especially when even the largest composting facilities in the country don't get insurance on their compost and they handle much more difficult food items than we do.

Dan Vecsi was a guy I visited who manages the Wilmington Organic Recycling Center, if I'm not mistaken one of the largest composting facilities on the east coast. He told me that insurance was not necessary to purchase for the sale of compost but was an option to look into. He did take regular soil tests and while these tests might be worth doing, I'm unsure of how important they would be for something at such a scale. I also called up the Lower East Side Ecology Center which sells compost in the farmers' markets at Union Square and they said that insurance for selling compost was not necessary as well.

Finally, what is important about allowing sales of compost at SLC is that composting is a grueling job. Why is it that in our society we would pay a student working in the music library or the gym 7-8 dollars an hour to check their facebook status and do their homework, but yet for a student who has to carry heavy buckets of smelly food waste day in and out, and stain several sets of clothes to carry this stuff, it should just be considered an unpaid job? This does not sound like a very just way of valuing one's work. It is a sad, unfortunate tiding to know that composting is such an atrociously undervalued service.

Our Composting Progress

As of this fall 2011 schoolyear we have

1. Sold 12 clothes drying racks
2. Composted nearly 1,000 pounds of food waste
3. Secured a new grant from Sarah Lawrence College (SLC)
4. Created a compost club at SLC
5. Collected 70 members on email list and have 5 people actively showing up and committing to the club
6. Have complete support for composting on a small scale at SLC only waiting for pending approval this coming Wednesday
7. 2 Students doing a conference projects relating to compost this summer other than me
8. Weighed food at Bates Dining Hall and reached out to numerous people in the college
9. Created several stickers which are now up on campus promoting environmentalism and our club
10. Have given tours of our composting site to more people this year than all of last year combined
11. Am doing an independent study to focus on the best type of full-scale composting facility at SLC
12. Admissions office at SLC now mentions our club in tours of the college and has raised a lot of interest in the club
13. Now have students helping compost on campus on a pilot scale, and am beginning to show students leadership skills in making composting happen on campus.