Ohio State students can sign up to collect a compost bucket for an Ohio State effort to divert 90 percent of waste away from landfills by 2025. Credit: Christian Harsa | Managing Editor for Digital Design
One person’s trash is Ohio State’s treasure as the university expands its composting program to students living in residence halls.
Students can now sign up for the composting program by signing a roommate agreement to collect their own residence hall compost bucket, participating in a new initiative aimed at helping Ohio State reach its goal of achieving zero waste by 2025, Tom Reeves, director of sustainability for the Office of Student Life, said.
Molly Kathleen, zero waste coordinator in Facilities Operations and Development, said the goal of achieving zero waste by 2025 was one of eight sustainability goals pledged by Ohio State in 2015 when only 29 percent of the university’s waste was being diverted away from landfills.
Compost buckets can be filled with food scraps, paper towels, napkins, animal products, organic matter and other compostable materials, Kathleen said. She said containers should be emptied at least once a week in one of the over 100 green drop-off bins found in the common areas of residence halls.
Kathleen said the waste is then taken to a registered compost facility where the material is processed and turned into a nutrient-rich soil amendment.
“If you, kind of, mix compost in with just regular soil, it just really enhances the soil as well as helps protect water,” Kathleen said. “It has the ability to improve the biological, chemical and physical characteristics of soil, so it reduces our need for herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers.”
Kathleen said the program allows students to compost organic material in their own dorms, and it expands on existing composting efforts already seen in dining halls, the Ohio Stadium and the off-campus drop-off program.
“A lot of the earlier efforts focused more on back-of-house and not very student-facing operations where a lot of food was being generated,” Kathleen said. “A lot of the earlier efforts were more on kitchen areas.”
Reeves said bringing the program to residence halls is important because it gets students more exposed to and engaged in Ohio State’s sustainability goals. He said the program’s goal is to get at least 1,000 students signed up by the end of the semester.
“We basically want to see composting in much more visible locations besides just the dining locations,” Reeves said. “If you work there, yeah, you know that we’re composting, but while they hire, you know, a couple thousand students, that’s nothing compared to the 60,000 we have.”
Reeves said Ohio State produces 20,000 tons of solid waste in a year, of which about a third can be composted. He said in the 2021 fiscal year, Ohio State’s diversion rate — waste diverted away from landfills — had grown to roughly 36 percent.
Kathleen said Ohio State is currently at a record 40 percent diversion rate, and if the expanded composting program goes well, it is projected to grow to 45 percent next year.
“Composting will definitely make a big difference on campus and making progress toward the waste diversion goal of zero waste,” Kathleen said.
Kathleen said another benefit to composting is keeping organic matter out of landfills, which otherwise would decompose in the anaerobic conditions — without oxygen — and produce methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. So far, she said Ohio State has diverted 114 tons of organic material from landfills since July, thanks to efforts from the on-and off-campus composting programs.
“The third-leading human-related cause of methane emissions in the U.S. is food waste and organics that has been disposed of in landfills,” Kathleen said.
Kathleen also said off-campus students and faculty interested in composting can sign up for Ohio State’s free drop-off program to receive a welcome kit with a small countertop compost bin, liners and a guide. She said those buckets can then be taken to one of the seven drop-off locations on campus every week, providing a more environmentally friendly outlet many in Columbus have previously lacked access to.
“For people who are living in multifamily housing units like apartments, they don’t always have access to even recycling,” Kathleen said. “We thought if everybody’s coming here anyway, they could just bring their food waste, drop it off on their way to, you know, class or work, and then, you know, take their tote with them at the end of the day.”
Because much of the university’s food is sent straight to landfills. About one-third of Ohio State’s waste is organic matter like food scraps and animal bedding from research labs, according to a news release.
Sonam Rustagi, a fourth-year in economics, said the waste has an environmental impact and is bad financially for the university. She said composting “is the most environmentally sensitive way to approach leftover food waste, post-consumer.”
Rustagi was one of 18 students accepted into the “Pathways to Net Zero Carbon Emissions” class taught by University President Kristina M. Johnson and Senior Vice President of the Office of Administration and Planning Jay Kasey. Rustagi said the class focused on conducting research and creating strategic energy plans to reduce carbon emissions, some of which might have influenced faculty to do more for the environment.
“A couple of different project groups in Dr. Johnson’s class focused on composting and different things that we could do in this area, and I think it may have engaged the staff members and administrators in the conversation more,” Rustagi said.
The new residence hall composting program is a great indicator of Ohio State as a model for sustainability and the growing interest of students wanting to engage in environmentally conscious lifestyles, Rustagi said.
“I think it’s a great step forward, and I think it’s definitely a model that other universities could look at, too,” Rustagi said. “Being such a large institution, I feel like we carry some of the responsibility in setting the standard.”
