SUSTAINABLE FSU
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016
IN THIS ISSUE: Featured Program: Food Recovery Network
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Green Space: FSU’s Compost Project
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Nole in Action: George Boggs
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Featured Program: Food Recovery Network
Many community members right here in Tallahassee face a dire concern each and every day—where to find their next meal. While one out of four Americans face food insecurity, 40% of all food produced in the U.S. ends up in the waste stream. The Food Network Recovery Network is a national nonprofit organization that unites students on college campuses to fight food waste and hunger by recovering perishable food that would otherwise go to waste from their campuses and communities and donating it to people in need. The Food Recovery network was formed in 2011 on the campus of the University of Maryland and has since expanded to 153 chapters on college campuses around the country. Since their formation, FRN has achieved the milestone of recovering and donating 1 million pounds of food.
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Allison Young, a senior in the College of Social Work, leads the FSU Chapter of Food Recovery Network. During the summer of 2014, Allison and a few friends worked to implement the chapter on our campus. Every semester since, student volunteers visit campus dining locations such as Einstein’s Bagels, Garnet & Go, POD Market, Starbucks, Trading Post, and baseball and football games and deliver the collected food to multiple local charitable organizations and homeless shelters. “It’s such a simple concept” explains Allison; “fighting food waste and donating to hungry people. We’re diminishing food waste within FSU while connecting with people in our local community.” To find out more and to get involved with the FRN, check out their Facebook page:
FSU Total: 5,781 lbs
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Green Space: Compost Project
Students in Laura Keller’s honors seminar aren’t big fans of sitting at a desk all semester—they’d rather get into the trenches. Or in this case, the compost bins. Composting is the process that takes food scraps and waste that would otherwise be tossed, and turns them into a nutrient-rich fertilizer that can be used on gardens and landscaping. Universities all over the country from Cornell to Harvard and the University of California have started up compost projects at their universities to reduce their amounts of waste entering the landfill. The idea for a university composting project at FSU was first hatched in the E-Series course, Living Green: Theory or Action, in which Dr. Keller and her students create and implement a semesterlong project to improve sustainability efforts at FSU. Last spring, students took on the task of researching and facilitating a pilot project to take tossed food waste from campus dining and turn it into nutrient dense composted fertilizer. The end product would be a free source of fertilizer that could be put back into the campus landscaping projects and Seminole Organic Garden therefore closing the loop on campus.
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The start-to-finish process of creating such a project was no easy task. Dr. Keller accounts that it took the class until the end of the semester last spring to do the legwork of developing, researching, and drafting the initial proposal, and then presenting these plans to Aramark and Facilities. Once they had the green light, students wrote up the Green Fund proposal (click here for more info on how to write your own) to secure funding before the project could officially begin. The compost project also relied on the enthusiasm and support of Suwannee Dining Hall manager Dottie Sisley, the Director of FSU Solid Waste, Willie Wiggins, and his crew, and FSU Grounds and landscaping crew, as well as others. Photos courtesy of FSU Compost Facebook
The initial small-scale pile was set up on concrete pads, with four bins for composting. As food fills the bins, an aerated static pile composting system, blows air through the piles. After a month, the blower is moved to the next bin, and the first is allowed to sit and cure for a moth until it’s ready. Students then sent soil samples out for testing, which revealed the compost was rich in potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorous, which helps to fertilize soil and makes germination rates of seeds highly successful. For now, the bins collect only a fraction of food waste generated on campus, When asked about the future direction, Dr. Keller says she hopes FSU will be able to expand the operation to make compost daily from the food waste from the entire campus - all food services currently run by Aramark, including the coffee grounds from the Starbucks on campus. Universities across the country are decreasing the percentage of their total waste that heads to landfills, instead repurposing and reusing through efforts like composting programs, and Keller’s vision is that FSU will continue to improve and grow the program in coming years. For more information on the composting project and how to get involved, visit their Facebook page.
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Nole in Action: George Boggs George Boggs’ family farm is not only where he and his family live and work—it’s a space where young students work toward a better future. Young men from the Leon County School’s gangprevention program, 50 Large, work with Boggs on the farm, getting their hands dirty, growing their own food, and learning about cultivating a lifestyle of respect and sustainability. Boggs, an assistant professor in the College of Education’s School of Teacher Education at FSU, has always had an interest in creating a unique classroom atmosphere, whether it was installing an espresso machine and selling lattes around school with his students or setting up seed trays to teach his high school English students about the cycle of food. Boggs, who grew up on a cattle and hay farm in northern Georgia, has always prioritized helping to prepare his students to be informed, productive members in the larger community—not just within school walls. As part of a partnership with 50 Large, a Leon County Schools initiative formed in 2009, Boggs’ fully-functioning farm is an implementation of his vision of teaching; harnessing the land to help students make good life decisions that cross over from the school realm into the real world. Tell us a little about your background: After graduating from the University of Georgia graduate program, I taught high school in Georgia at Riverside Military Academy School for Boys. Over time I became interested in holistic education. I found students were motivated by food-orientated basic life processes; life and death, primitive processes. They were interested in the big picture, so we
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made bread in class and started seeds. This allowed them to disconnect from negative influences and have a connection with their society. How is teaching college similar? College is a strain—we’re all disconnected from our community and not in our home social group any more so my first step was to begin working with groups of college students interested in building really meaningful connections. What I realized at the prep school was that it was good at straightening out behaviors but not good at helping students discover who they were in the community. I’m interested in making school experiences better, even for those who don’t see themselves naturally cut out for formal education. So how do the daily operations of the farm go? We have four young men each week who are paid wages. Some have been with them 18 months or maybe a few months and then passed on. It’s crucial that the students are here by choice and come and go as they need/want. This is all about entrepreneurship and ownership. How does food and farming play a role in sustainability? Everyone eats and is familiar with food. The local food movement is changing agriculture, and there are new and interesting opportunities and ways to think about it. Young people are getting involved all over the world. It’s a great place to legitimately offer students an opportunity to do rewarding, valuable self-directive things. We have to think about is this the best thing we can do? Will it hold up economically? Culturally? Ecologically? Is it the best we can do across all fronts? Our integration of farming is to model a situation where we can say what is the best thing we can do across all these areas. Sustainability is a concept that we use actively. What are you plans for the future of the farm? I definitely plan to continue this farm and grow it. The Ann and John Daves family has given a gift to help expand and so I’m investing specifically into a proposal to build our food preparation aspect. We want the farm to be a way for people to leave behind identities that they don’t want to take with them and adopt new ones to explore.
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Produced by:
Editor: Emily Schneider-Green Design: Thy Le
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