Alliot waste to be composted
A step towards a greener campus

Mary Cate Connors | fact checker

Every day, hundreds of St. Michael’s College students leave wasted food on their trays in Alliot. These scraps are removed from plates and thrown into the trash, eventually sent to a landfill.

Now, after months of meetings between Sodexho, Physical Plant, the Student Association (S.A.) and the new St. Michael's environmental council, a portion of Alliot’s daily waste will instead be used as compost.

"COMPOST ONLY"

Large blue totes stenciled with the words “COMPOST ONLY” will contain the kitchen preparation produce as well as all cooked and leftover proteins for compost, says Hank Strashnick, general manager of Sodexho dining services at St. Michael's. Alliot will still be throwing away all raw proteins, however, he says.

According to Hank Strashnick, general manager for Sodexho at St. Michael's, the dining hall produces 200 pounds of waste a day and 400,000 pounds a year. Larry Frisoli, photo

All of the food goes into water troughs after it is taken off of the trays and is ground into a “meatloaf mix,” Strashnick says.

“It is already ground and adding the napkins helps the [substance] break down quicker,” he says. “So this material is perfect.”

The arrangements for composting were made at the beginning of the year between Strashnick and Physical Plant to keep the waste in bins on the loading dock of Alliot, next to the dumpsters. Physical Plant will take care of removing and dumping these buckets daily, Strashnick says.

The bins were chosen to be durable enough to keep out most of the smell, keep animals from getting at the waste and stay durable during the cold weather, Strashnick says.

The waste from the dining hall will be transported from the loading dock to the compost pile, which is located across Route 15 behind the cemetery. Physical Plant has already added grass clippings to the pile, but no Alliot waste yet.  

According to Strashnick, the dining hall produces at least 200 pounds of waste a day and about 400,000 pounds of waste a year. This number will be reduced when the school is not throwing as much away, he says.

“With [composting], we can take a pretty good dent out of the stream,” Strashnick says.

Composting in action: slow but sure

Kevin Anglin, the S.A.'s secretary of student life, heard about the composting idea at the end of last year.

Kevin Anglin, the secretary of student life for the S.A., kept contact between Physical Plant, Sodexho, the environmental council and Green-Up to make composting happen. Larry Frisoli, photo

“Last year when I got the position I went to one of the S.A. meetings that they have with Sodexho and someone mentioned it,” he says. “It didn’t really carry any weight or anything, I just kept it in the back of my head.”

Anglin put the wheels into motion at the beginning of this year. He was responsible for getting all of the necessary groups on board for the project, he says. He kept in contact with Sodexho, Green Up, the environmental council and Physical Plant and stayed informed of the steps they were taking.

“The task was fairly daunting at first, grabbing all these people who were very important to the process and keeping everyone happy,” Anglin says. “It came together earlier than I thought it would. I was surprised it didn’t take longer.”

There were some obstacles along the way, however, says Dan Sandberg, a member of the environmental council, a new group of students, faculty and staff on campus.

There were issues with the loading dock, heath concerns and the possibility of rodents trying to get into the compost bins. After those problems were figured out, it was necessary to get workers to put food into the compost bins instead of the trash and then get Physical Plant to pick up daily, he says.

“We put pressure on [Physical Plant and Sodexho] and made them aware that it was something that was important to us and the students as a whole,” Sandberg says. “They stepped up and worked out the details.”

For Anglin, the project was a way to help St. Michael’s reduce its carbon footprint and also a way to use his position on the S.A. to make changes he knew a lot of groups on campus wanted to see, he says.

“Personally, I’m for composting. I don’t like the idea of waste in Alliot,” Anglin says. “But even if it wasn’t important to me, I know it’s important to a lot of other people so I really wanted to see it happen.” 

Completing the cycle

When we throw our waste in the trash, we are losing all of the fertilizer capabilities within a landfill and there is no more use for it, Sandberg says. When we put the food waste back into the ground, instead of the trash, we are completing its nutrient cycle, he says.

“It’s not hard for us to do it and it makes a big difference, so we should,” Sandberg says.

The new composting program is a win-win situation, according to Strashnick. There is a potential for completely free compost material and that would eliminate the cost of fertilizer, he says.

The composting bins will be placed on the loading dock and collected daily by Physical Plant. Larry Frisoli, photo

The compost will have to break down, or “cook” for a period of time, but St. Michael’s will then be able to use its own food scraps as fertilizer for various projects around campus. It is going to be used in the Teaching Gardens and could possibly serve to reseed the 300s field, Strashnick says.

“It bugs me that Physical Plant would ever spend money on fertilizer, it doesn’t add up at all,” Sandberg says. “We, me and you, are paying for that cost as students.”

Using Alliot’s waste for compost will not only cut down on Physical Plant’s costs, but it will save the dining hall money as well, Strashnick says.

“When rubbish is removed, the contractor will charge for the pickup to the landfill and we get charged for the weight,” Strashnick says. “In theory, if we can remove it before it hits the dumpster, we can cut down on the number of pickups.”

Sandberg and Green Up are planning to raise awareness about the composting program so that students understand the process better, Sandberg says.

“It’s really cool that we’re going to be composting, but I’m more concerned that students recognize that this is an important thing to do,” Sandberg says. “So that’s the next step, to really create awareness.”