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Second installment in a series visits colleges and universities where students launched the diversion programs.
Part II
A "shout-out" on a community food list-serve for examples of food waste composting on college and university campuses yielded more than 50 responses. Part I of this series (July 201 0) focused on programs that are integrated into the schools' curriculum. Part Il profiles programs launched wholly or largely as student initiatives.
STROLL through Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland and you'll find compost tumblers strategically placed around the campus, beckoning passers by to give a hardy spin. The rotating compost barrels are part of an initiative launched four years ago by four students in the Agricultural Co-op. Goucher community members can put their fruit and vegetable waste and coffee grounds into white plastic buckets found at each of these locations. As the buckets fill up, their contents are added by students in the co-op to the tumblers beside them for composting. The tumblers are an extension of the co-op's food waste composting program started in conjunction with a campus garden.
'Our project was initiated by students in the Agricultural Co-op on campus so that our garden could have a closed loop," explains co-op leader Jennifer Jordan. "We grow food, sell it to the dining halls, compost food from dining halls for use on our garden and use the money made to buy new seeds." The co-op also sells the compost - $4 for a 5-gallon bucketful - to faculty and staff and to those who have plots in the campus garden, says Jordan. The program is supported with student government funds as well as with dollars generated by the program itself.
Feedstock for the compost includes some preconsumer food waste - raw fruits and vegetables - collected from two of three dining halls and mixed with wood chips and ground leaves in cinder block bins enclosed on three sides. "We just make sure they are turned everyday by someone in the co-op," says Jordan, adding that the cycle from introduced food scraps to compost is about six weeks. Getting funding to pay student cornposters was challenging but ultimately successful, she says. "Our students are paid $8/hour and they work one hour a week. We have two students...