Jasmine Kosonen has been keeping a compost pile in the backyard of her house on Lancaster Road for the past three years. Kosonen, a senior at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has a bucket that she fills with eggshells, pieces of unused food and other biodegradable materials. She then dumps all of her waste in the backyard.

Kosonen said her favorite part about having a compost pile is that she gets to watch all the animals that come and feed off of the decomposing food.

‘It’s great to see all the fauna that come to the pile,’ Kosonen said. ‘Everything from snails to squirrels.’

Syracuse University uses pre-consumption composting, which removes carrot peels and other various vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, tea bags, and all salad bar leftovers, but currently is not involved in any kind of post-consumption composting.

Composting is the act of taking the organic waste created by dining habits and putting it in a pile outside where worms, bacteria and other natural forces break the food down.

SU dining halls produce more than 300 pounds of post-consumed food every day, according to the 2008 Green Campus Initiative. Joyce Burwell, Shaw Dining Center’s first cook, said it’s frustrating and angering to see how much is wasted. As someone who sees first hand how much food comes back to the kitchen, she said too much food is thrown away every day.

Burwell said she believes that while composting is a good solution to waste reduction, the best solution would be portion control.

‘I think students should be served their food,’ Burwell said. ‘It would create jobs and cut the amount of wasted food. Kids come in here taking more than they could possibly eat, when they can easily take less and come back for seconds.’

Portion control may not be easy to implement because students wouldn’t like the idea, Burwell said, but the university is taking steps to create a composting program, which is still in the planning stages.

Marissa Angell, a freshman in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said she was disgusted and outraged by food waste on campus. The mere sight of plate after plate of untouched food being sent back to the kitchen to be thrown out bothered Angell so much, she said, that she decided to do something about it.

Angell e-mailed SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor to see how she could become involved in creating a composting program for SU’s dining halls. Cantor put her in contact with Steve Lloyd, SU’s chief sustainability officer.

‘I really wanted to start composting after watching so many people, including my friends, waste food in the dining halls,’ Angell said.

Steve Lloyd is currently working with Mark Tewksbury, assistant director of dining services, to incorporate composting into the dining halls and cafés on campus.

‘Composting will not only reduce the amount of waste that is produced by our campus,’ Lloyd said, ‘but will reduce the amount of methane given off by the landfills where the trash would go.’

Lloyd said that by composting, SU would be paying half the price for waste removal, as opposed to using trash services.

‘It makes sense economically,’ Lloyd said, ‘especially these days.’

SU used to send its waste to a farm outside of the city, until issues with insurance and paperwork caused the university to discontinue its work with the farm.

The New York Public Interest Research Group is currently planning a composting teach-in to help make students aware of how they can reduce the waste they create on campus.

Bill Hoelzer, a first year master’s student in philosophy and environmental ethics and a project leader for the teach-in, said the idea came from last semester’s sustainability workshop.

The biggest issue facing the development of composting on campus is a place to dump the waste, he said. Hoelzer said he hopes to promote a philosophy of conservation to those who attend, starting with reducing the amount of food that is thrown away.

Lloyd said he is determined to improve environmental aspects of the campus, starting with small steps like composting.

‘Hopefully we can achieve zero waste someday,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to stop trying until we do.’

wlhalsey@syr.edu

Published on February 25, 2009 at 12:00 pm