In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

College Composting Program Shapes Up In Kentucky

In Business, July-August, 2005, Vol. 27, No. 4, p. 26

Horticultural enterprises at Berea College are managed as businesses, processing 35 tons of food residuals each year while providing jobs for students and nutrients for crops.

Sean Clark and Michel Cavigelli

IN 1998, Berea College in Kentucky embarked upon a pilot program to compost food residuals to generate an organic soil amendment and demonstrate the feasibility of responsible waste management. Since then, the program has become a fundamental part of the College's garden and greenhouse program, the horticultural component of its 500-acre educational farm.
Although most of the students working in this operation are majors in the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, students from other disciplines are also employed here, such as art, political science, and international studies, creating a rich and diverse learning environment. About a dozen students work five to 10 hours per week in the program in any given semester.
All horticultural enterprises are managed as businesses and evaluated on their potential to provide educational experience and generate an income adequate for self-sufficiency. The enterprises currently include production and sale of salad greens, herbs, perennials, annuals, vegetable transplants, honey and mushrooms. The greens are sold locally during the fall and spring through wholesale and retail marketing. The other products are sold through direct marketing with local delivery and seasonal farmers markets. All production has been under organic management since 1998.

COMPOSTING PILOT PROGRAM
The food residuals composting program was initiated because we needed compost, and there were no local sources. Moreover, such a program taught students about waste management, recycling, nutrient cycling, and other environmental-science topics. The program started with a small budget and a group of dedicated students. Initially, the work was labor-intensive and time-consuming, and the quality of the finished compost was variable.
Pre- and postconsumer food residuals generated by Berea College's food service facility, which feeds about 1,200 students during the academic year, amounted to just under 1 lb/student each day. The pilot program started by collecting only preconsumer residuals. But in fall of 2000, two years after the program began, collection receptacles and informational posters were installed in the dining area to collect all postconsumer residuals as well, more than doubling the total food residuals for composting.
Once food residuals were collected, they had a number of different uses: 1) Feed for free-range chickens, ducks, and geese that partially processed the materials; 2) Feedstock for a small vermicomposting system; 3) Raw material high in nitrogen and water to be mixed with straw, leaves, or chipped wood for composting; and 4) Source of heat and carbon dioxide for plants when composted inside a greenhouse or cold frame. The finished compost produced was used either as a soil amendment in the two acres of vegetable gardens or as a part of a greenhouse potting medium, composing 50 to 75 percent of the mix.

CONTINUING CHALLENGES
Although the composting program collects about 35 tons of food residuals each academic year (fall and spring semesters combined) from the College food service, it barely keeps up with the demand for high quality compost by the garden and greenhouse operation. Options in the future could include expanding the collection of food residuals to local restaurants, but since this would also increase costs, a careful economic analysis would be necessary first.

Sean Clark is an assistant professor in the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Michel Cavigelli is a soil microbiologist with the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, USDA-ARS, in Beltsville, Maryland.

CAMPUS USES FOOD RESIDUALS TO “THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY”
The facilities management group of World Learning and the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont has arranged for much of its campus organic residuals (including food waste) to be composted on a farm in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Students, faculty and staff start the process by sorting recyclables into separate buckets. Compostable feedstocks are gathered in dumpsters and trucked by Triple T Trucking of Brattleboro to Martin's Farm in Greenfield where food scraps, paper, cardboard, etc. are mixed into long windrows, reports Tristan Roberts of World Learning. - J.G.

LOCAL SCHOOLS SUPPLY LUNCHTIME COMPOSTABLES
San Francisco - which has a super municipal program for collecting and composting both residential and commercial food residuals from the six
million pounds of garbage generated daily - is also one of the first cities in the country to have an organics diversion program at K-12 schools. Known as Food To Flowers! it involves collecting leftover food and soiled paper from school lunches which are then taken to compost facilities. Based on information supplied by SF Environment, older students are responsible for conducting waste audits to assess the impact of lunchtime recycling on waste reduction. The end product is used as fertilizer by Bay Area farms, wineries, landscape companies, school gardens, etc.
SF Environment provides schools with green carts for collecting food leftovers. "By joining Food to Flowers!, your school will help reduce farmers' dependence on chemical fertilizers, helping to grow more local food," explains a brochure about the school program. Local businesses are urged to participate - as haulers get more involved in fulfilling the project goals.
School programs go by many different names, including Litterless Lunches, Ecoschool Lessons, Worm to Cafe, and School-to-Farm Connection. Davis,California public schools link garden, cafeteria and classroom with local agriculture - featuring farmers' market visits, farm tours and compost-making. The "R" project at Reeds Spring High School in Missouri has its own in-vessel composting unit. In Nova Scotia, an Eco-Schools Program involves a collaboration between the Halifax Regional School Board and the EarthCycle Opportunities Society to develop sustainable practices in the area's 149 schools. - J.G.