Shortly after passing the Dairy Barn on Dairy Lane in Athens, students and Athens residents are greeted by two solar-paneled rooftops that power the largest in-vessel composting system at any university in the country.
The system — where organic materials are turned to compost in a closed, carefully controlled environment — composts almost 100 percent of all Ohio University Culinary Services food waste, said Steve Mack, director of Facilities Management.
“In terms of everything that Culinary Services actually touches, we’re very close to 100 percent,” Mack said. “We’ve got to be in the high 90s.”
In the last 30 days, Jefferson, Boyd and Nelson dining halls, and most recently Baker University Center, have been incorporated into OU’s composting system, which had already composted food from Shively Dining Hall and OU’s Central Food Facility, Mack said, adding that Baker came online in the past week.
“We waste a lot of food at OU … you should only take as much as you need,” said Jaymie Tighe, a senior studying communications and the special communications coordinator for the Office of Sustainability.
Food waste at OU among students is twice that of the other universities OU has compared its food waste to, according to OU’s Office of Sustainability.
To combat this waste, OU built one in-vessel composting unit in 2009 with grants covering the $355,370 cost, though total start-up costs for the project were $800,000, paid for by OU through university reserves, according to the Office of Sustainability.
This past summer, OU expanded the facility because of high usage with a larger in-vessel composting unit, with a $1,088,571 grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, along with $579,646 in matching funds from the university, said Annie Laurie Cadmus, director of Sustainability.
This in-vessel expansion began composting in the past 30 days, Mack said.
“The composting operation (built in 2009) was running at 100 percent capacity and only was doing Shively and (OU’s Central Food Facility),” Mack said. “Now that we’ve got the (expansion), we’ve got to feed it.”
The two machines have a capacity of 6 tons a day; 60 percent is food waste and 40 percent is a bulking agent, Mack said, adding that the facility as a whole is not running at capacity yet.
The food is mixed with wood chips and ground up before being dropped into the machine, where it decomposes for about two weeks.
“In 14 to 16 days, we do what it takes mother nature six to eight months to do,” said Dave “Moose” Moorehead, a compost operator. “We used to take all this and throw it in the trash. Over the years, it’s millions of tons.”
“The Gobbler,” as Moorehead calls the machine, can hold thousands of 60-to 70-gallon composting bins that collect food from dining halls and eateries across campus.
At the end of the two-week composting period, each machine spits out a “tray” of compost — a pile roughly two yards in diameter and height that looks more like mulch than former dining hall fare.
The compost is then spread around OU’s intramural fields, gardens and the greens, Mack said.
OU plans to begin adding compostable service ware from Baker Center to the composting facility next semester after figuring out a way for the machines to process it, Mack said, bringing the university to 100 percent recycling of Culinary Services food waste.
“We have probably the largest capacity of anybody out there. With the in-vessel (facility), we control everything,” Mack said. “Now we can use our own stuff (instead of buying compost or fertilizer). Not 100 percent, but we have dramatically reduced what we buy.”
dd195710@ohio.edu
