MU compost program benefits dining halls, students and Columbia

By Katie Moritz

Published Sept. 16, 2008

Every morning at 8 a.m., former Sustain Mizzou President Adam Saunders and his faithful crew of students pick up 50-pound black garbage bags of pulped food waste, the consistency of tuna salad, from the back of Rollins. They mix it by hand with horse manure, donated by the stables at Stephens College. To this group of volunteers and their leader, getting down and dirty for the environment is worth it.

Saunders, a first-year graduate student, spent the summer concocting a new approach to service learning by putting together a class that studies composting. Through a grant that Saunders received, he was able to put his plans into action.

"Two friends and I get together and brainstorm constantly," Saunders said. "This spawned from other ideas we had."

Saunders' environmental studies class has two components. The students in the class do lab work and research inside the classroom, the second is hands-on, getting students actually involved with the composting process.

"I see this as a way to help Columbia gardens and sustain soil fertility, making it easier to produce food in an urban setting," Saunders said.

Members of Saunders' class pick up the food waste from Rollins Dining Hall twice a day and transport it to the St. Joseph and Sustain Mizzou community gardens, at the corner of Saint Joseph and Ash streets. These leftovers are used as compost for the gardens, which grow pumpkins, squash, beans, potatoes, watermelon and other foods.

"There was an opportunity last year to pick up Rollins' waste, and we did that for a day," Sustain Mizzou President Pat Margherio said. "We made contacts through Rollins and were able to set up composting for ten weeks every day."

Rollins' management is also excited about and invested in the project, Margherio said.

"We didn't have to convince them of anything," he said. "They saw the benefit and were really enthusiastic and ready to get involved."

Campus Dining Services manager Nancy Monteer said the entire Rollins staff and MU administrators were gung-ho about the project from the start.

"This is a really great partnership," Monteer said. "They took this project and really were forward thinking. It's all out there to be explored at this point."

Monteer said Rollins would have already set up a plan for composting its waste, but "there's so much, nobody really knows what to do with it."

In fact, Saunders' class picks up 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of leftovers from the dining hall each week. The goal of the project is for students to become aware of a more sustainable lifestyle, where even wasted food isn't wasted.

The donated "urban gardens" have been under the care of Sustain Mizzou for six months. Margherio said Saunders has been at the helm of the project since the gardens were gifted to the club, "working immensely hard to make it a success."

In the past, the food that Sustain Mizzou grew in the gardens was donated to Missouri Central Food Bank, but Margherio hopes that the food grown there will be used for other purposes, including growing food that goes back to the student body.

"Our society is heavily reliant on foreign resources," Saunders said. "This project aims to reduce our dependence on foreign resources by growing our own food."

Although Saunders' project is only 10 weeks in length, he hopes this is just the tip of the compost pile when it comes to his work with urban gardening around Columbia.

"I'd like to continue this project in semesters to come," Saunders said. "We really want to get students involved with urban gardening and composting."

The project is a way to show administrators the benefits of being more earth-friendly while not having to spend school money, Margherio said. Because Saunders' grant is paying for the project, he has the opportunity to experiment with it without worrying about funds.

"It's something we've never done before on campus," Margherio said. "It's really an opportunity to advance the sustainability on campus and a chance for administrators to look and see how good this is and maybe start their own program that composts food."

In fact, other earth-friendly dining hall procedures are already taking effect.

"Campus Dining did a huge study on food waste and they're really starting to look at this intently," Margherio said. "Brady Commons will be going tray-less in January."

Campus dining halls already participate in a partnership with a St. Louis company that hauls away leftover cooking grease, Monteer said. The grease is recycled by the company and turned into bio-diesel fuel. Monteer said students from the agriculture school have also approached her about recycling the grease to power school vehicles.

"It could be someday that all campus vehicles are powered by French fry oil," Monteer said.

Saunders said that his overall goal is to raise awareness and get students out and volunteering at the gardens.