New machines will transform students’ leftover food into energy

That half-eaten burger and cold tomato soup that began their lives as a dining hall lunch may soon find their final resting place in a bed of flowers, as part of a new sustainability effort by Dining Services.

The department is testing two new machines that will convert leftover food into usable waste. A machine at The Diner will convert food and other bio-degradable waste into water. At the South Campus Dining Hall, a soil amendment machine will transform the building's waste into a fertilzer to be used on the campus.

Dining Services and Facilities Management officials will observe the two machines during a 60-day pilot program. At the end of the program, they will purchase either one or both machines, Dining Services Director Colleen Wright-Riva said. Wright-Riva estimated that, after bidding discussions, Dining Services will spend $20,000 to $30,000 on whichever machine they choose.

"We're just really trying to do something better for the campus, better for the students and better for the environment," she said.

Both machines will work with a technology that is already in place. Over winter break, Dining Services purchased pulping machines that combine food waste with napkins and biodegradable containers. The by-product from those machines will then be transferred into the new machines, where they will be converted into water or soil amendment.

The soil amendment strategy is particularly attractive to university officials because it would form a "closed loop," utilizing once useless waste as fertilizer for the university's plants and trees.

Wright-Riva added that even though the initial investment will take approximately five years to pay back, Dining Services will likely save money in the end. As a result, students will see savings reflected in their dining costs.

"Compost is a big percentage of our current waste stream, and the technology has now become available for us to take that compost and turn it into something that we can use," said Bill Guididas, coordinator of the University Recycling and Solid Waste Programs.

The new machines would save Dining Services money by decreasing dining hall trash, which, Wright-Riva suggested, costs between $40 and $60 per ton to have hauled away.

"It's going to have a huge impact on the amount [of waste] that we're currently putting into the landfill," said Sandra Dykes, assistant director for Administrative Services for Building and Landscape Services, of the new technology. "We're figuring right now over 300 tons a year is going into the landfill that we have the potential of capturing into either the waste to water or the soil amendment."

With fluctuating hauling costs in the unstable economy, the potential for these savings seems to be a perfect fit for Dining Services and Facilities Management.

"We are looking for new and bright ideas all the time," Dykes said. "We are seeing the success of these programs at other colleges and universities."

Students were supportive of the new measure but still saw the potential for the university to expand its sustainability in even more ways.

"[The university] needs to be making sustainable choices around campus in many different forms," senior environmental science and policy major Ken Frankel said. "You can't just do one thing."

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