The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” holds true at the U.
This is the theme behind the composting program on campus. On average, two to three thousand pounds of pre-consumer food waste is composted each calendar year. The compost program runs all school year, as well as through the summer.
The composting program began in 2009 through a partnership with the Edible Campus Gardens. The impetus was to support the student-run gardens, which use compost to grow organic produce. Composting food scraps is also part of Dining Services’ larger management plan to reduce the amount of waste that is dumped in landfills.
Kathleen Hunt, sustainability coordinator, said there are plenty of benefits to having such programs at the U.
“These programs help Dining Services foster good relationships with and beyond the U campus, as well as reducing waste, part of the Campus Climate Action plan,” Hunt said.
At the Union, pre-consumer food waste from the Union Food Court is sorted and stored in large bins that are regularly delivered to the two Campus Gardens sites. Garden volunteers and interns dump the scraps into the compost piles, layering them with hay and adding coffee grinds, also collected from the Union, to achieve the right balance between carbon and nitrogen. The compost piles are turned every so often to ensure adequate breakdown of the nutrients to create compost. Compost is then used to fertilize the soil in the gardens.
Jen Colby, Campus Gardens advisor, said the U’s gardens are important on both a campus and community scale.
“The Gardens promote interdisciplinary collaboration by building upon the skills and interests of multiple areas of the campus,” Colby said. “Civil engineering, social justice, botany, continuing education are all parts of the inner working of the garden. It’s a campus and community effort that makes the gardens great.”
Another aspect of the composting program is Momentum Recycling. Larger scraps, such as melon rinds, pits and corn cobs, are sorted out of the scraps composted by the Campus Gardens. The waste is then stored in bins at the Union and the Heritage Center for pick-up by Momentum Recycling, a local company who works with the county to compost pre-consumer food scraps and yard waste.
In addition to the compost program, packaged items sold in campus food retail locations are stored in the Union kitchen and hand-delivered each week to the Salt Lake City Rescue Mission, an organization that works downtown to serve and rehabilitate the homeless community. Each delivery to the Rescue Mission typically donates five crates of packaged foods. Donations are not weighed, but it is estimated that Dining Services has donated nearly 500 pounds of food to the Rescue Mission.
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