Michigan State’s Independent Voice
HOW MSU’S WORM WIZARD IS LEADING VERMICOMPOSTING ON CAMPUS MSU’s gender equity CAMPUS
issues are worse than they seem
By Joe Lorenz jlorenz@statenews.com At Michigan State, 51,000 students produce 14,000 pounds of food waste across MSU’s 30 dining locations in a single day. Generally, food waste is sent to decompose in open air in a landfill, producing methane: a greenhouse gas 80 times more effective at holding in heat than carbon dioxide. This process is described as an open ending to an unsustainable “food loop,” or the food production process from growing, consumption and waste. In 2010, MSU horticulture professor John Biernbaum sought to develop a method diverting some food waste away from landfills, beginning a vermicomposting project with funding from the MSU Student Life & Engagement, or SLE, formerly known as Resident Housing Services, and the MSU Office of Sustainability with the goal of diverting kitchen preparation scraps from the landfill. Vermicomposting is a method of converting organic material into nutrient rich fertilizer by feeding worms a microbe-rich compost and harvesting the resulting material. In simpler terms: vermicomposting turns vegetable scraps into worm poop. This method only deals with kitchen prep scraps, as they have the least contaminants and are easily broken down. Worms are sensitive to protein and sodium, two things found in many processed meat and cheeses. Over the course of five years, Biernbaum developed this vermicomposting method into a viable system for recycling kitchen scraps. His original method was able to process 20,000 pounds of food waste in a single year. A small team of students used pitchforks and wheelbarrows to harvest compost and move materials. In 2018, Biernbaum welcomed a new partner into his worm business: future Worm Wizard Sean Barton. Ba r ton, MSU a lum nus a nd c ur rent
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CULTURE
The Worm Wizard, Sean Barton, with his real worms at the Michigan State University Recycling Center and Surplus Store on Oct. 30. Photo by Maya Kolton.
operations supervisor of the MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center, or SSRC, began his college career at MSU in 2003. Barton developed an interest in sustainability after working in the dorms with MSU’s SLE. This led Barton to a position at the SSRC: initially as a collections worker and then as the recycling center’s overseer. It was then that Barton met Biernbaum and his worm subjects. Biernbaum needed a permanent home for his project before he retired; somewhere the project could not only operate, but flourish. The recycling center was already recycling and reusing materials from campus but had no systems for organics. So, the facility welcomed Biernbaum’s vermicomposting methods and Barton to learn the way of the worm. Barton gained his title as Worm Wizard from Biernbaum, who had already gained the title of “Worm Whisperer.” After deliberations with Barton, the title of Worm Wizard was chosen and has stuck ever since. The SSRC’s vermicomposting site is the most northern location of its kind in Michigan,
as vermicomposting is more difficult to accomplish in northern states due to the cold temperatures in winter months. Barton said his job is to “receive whatever the university gives me and make something useful out of it,” and his efforts can be seen in every corner of the facility. Piles of waste are organized as neatly as possible based on material: plastic, cardboard, mixed paper, metal, library books and wires stripped for copper. If there isn’t a labeled bin for each material, a new one is made and filled. This same philosophy is applied to the vermicomposting program. Barton said if he had his way, every piece of organic waste produced by the university would be reused in some fashion. To aid in further composting efforts, all raw vegetable scraps go through a “precomposting” process before being fed to the worms.
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CAMPUS
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MSU students say sirens, safety alerts can be triggering following campus shooting By Hannah Holycross hholycross@statenews.com The Feb. 13 campus shooting at Michigan State University impacted students and the community in many ways. For most, the grief and shock they experienced created trauma that still lingers. Many students have realized that common noises and other daily occurrences they previously didn’t pay much attention to have become triggers, or anything that causes a person to relive past trauma. Pre-law sophomore Nicole Garrett said before the shooting, the sounds of police sirens didn’t bother her, but now, it makes her uneasy. During last spring semester, Garrett lived East Lansing Police park outside Berkey Hall after the mass shooting on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023 in Michigan State in Yakeley Hall, a dormitory not far from to University’s North Neighborhood. State News File Photo. the MSU Union, a site of the shooting. T U ES DAY, N OVE MB E R 14, 2023
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Due to her proximity to the event, one of her strongest memories was hearing the sirens of cop cars and ambulances making their way to the scene, changing the way she now reacts to the sound. “Sometimes when I’m just laying in bed or doing homework I’ll hear like sirens going off, like fire department or police sirens or something, and it kind of just takes me back to being in my dorm last year, and the same feeling I had then with when I first hear the sirens,” Garrett said. Garrett isn’t alone. Du r i ng a s y mposiu m h igh l ight i ng experiences and healthcare responses to the shooting hosted by the Michigan State Medical Society Alliance, or MSMSA, education masters student and basketball player Stephen Izzo shared t hat he
continuously heard sirens during his sleep for months following the event. “My ears were ringing, but it only sounded like police sirens,” Izzo said. Garrett said it isn’t just sirens that remind her of Feb. 13, but also emergency alerts she gets on her phone. “Whenever I get a notification from like campus security, I get freaked out or I always think back to that time when we first got the security alert and being so careful and texting my family,” Garrett said. “It’s just not a fun experience to go back to and to wonder, ‘What’s happening on campus now?’” Even though some time has passed, Garrett said, the anxiety she gets when seeing or hearing these triggers has stayed consistent.
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