Ohio State has a goal to be “Zero Waste” by 2025, meaning that over 90% of the trash currently generated on campus would be diverted from landfills. An important step in achieving this goal is diverting food waste through composting.
In 2019, we were chasing a #zerowaste goal for the café in the Parker Food Science building, called the Parker Dairy Store. To enable this, we planned to begin composting the front–of–house waste at the Parker Dairy Store in March 2020! We would be the first café on campus to compost front-of-house waste and the findings from our initiative would inform similar composting programs for cafés across campus in the future. To measure the feasibility of this program, we compared the trash weights before and after the introduction of composting. We expected the trash volume to decrease as the compostable waste was diverted away from landfills. This would help decrease methane emissions by reducing the amount of organic matter such as food waste ending up in landfills.
We also measured the level of composting education and people’s attitudes towards composting. We found that people are willing to compost if an option is readily available to them. People are even willing to pay more for their food if their waste were to be composted. We were really excited to begin our composting pilot program, and were honored to be rewarded a grant from Ohio State Energy Partners to implement a year–long composting initiative at the Parker Dairy Store.
Unfortunately, because of COVID, the prospects of the Parker Dairy Store reopening are now slim. Although a major hurdle, this hasn’t dampened our spirits. We are now exploring alternative ways to reduce food waste on campus. Stay tuned for updates on this story!