20 responsibility and renewal
3POTLIGHT ON 3USTAINABILITY
Waste Best Practice
Putting Food Scraps to Good Use
UMass Amherst has long set an admirable example of how best to manage solid waste on a university campus. The campus boasted a 56% solid waste diversion rate in 2006 and continues to look for ways to improve their program. Their efforts save their university over $250,000 in annual disposal costs.
There is nothing wrong nutritionally with pre-consumer food waste except that it tends to be clippings and trimmings that humans don’t want to eat—the skins of potatoes, the peelings from carrots, the leafy tops of celery, the end cuts of cheeses. But, to chickens otherwise fed on a steady diet of cornmeal, this mix makes a healthy, inexpensive, and varied alternative. Since 2007, UMass Dartmouth has been sending its pre-consumer food waste to feed Silverbrook Farm’s chickens. This particular farm, just around the corner from the UMass Dartmouth campus, has been devoted to sustainable and organic practices for over five years. Its chickens consume every week over 200 pounds of University kitchen scraps that would otherwise go straight into the waste bin. Just started in December of 2009 is a composting effort that will save post-consumer food leftovers from rotting in the trash. Already, just one of four waste stations in the residential cafeteria is collecting approximately 400 pounds a week in uneaten food that can be fed to chickens or composted for enriching garden soil. With an estimated 3,000 meals served every day on campus, the potential seems promising for many more hundreds of pounds of food waste to be redirected for farming once all trash stations in both residential and commuter cafeterias participate in the effort.
Their program is based on a principle of Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) “which holds that “garbage” is not a homogenous mass to be burned or buried and then forgotten.” Their system is based on a hierarchical priority structure that allows them to focus their efforts on achieving the best results. That hierarchy is as follows: 1. Reduce 2. Reuse 3. Recycle or Compost 4. Incinerate with Energy Recovery 5. Landfill The biggest lesson to learn from their example is that waste isn’t simply garbage to be sent for disposal, instead that there is great opportunity in how waste is managed, and that in an ideal system, a closed loop system, waste should become a resource for another purpose.
Future Research Projects
For Discussion
Research into developing sustainable “Closed-Loop Systems” to eliminate waste and establish best practice models are needed. Partnering with local businesses that can take back used products and repurpose them for continued use may be a possibility. Research and creativity are both required to move from our “cradle-to-grave” system to a “cradle-to-cradle” system.
What are some examples of how modern waste items could be changed into “cradle-to-cradle” new beginnings for other products? Do you believe that you recycle to your best ability and if not, what holds you back?
Additional Resources www.epa.gov/waste/conserve/rrr/recycle.htm www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/ storyofstuff.org/