I’ve got some great news, Bessie the cow is back.Yes indeed, my dear sustainable Vandals, the Food and Farm Composting Program is open and ready for business, specifically for your food leftovers. We first befriended Bessie back in 2010 when the Food and Farm program was initiated. Like many of the happy cows at the UI Dairy, Bessie represents the lucky recipients of this composting program.
But how does the composting program work?
By collaborating with various groups around campus, including the College of Agricultural Life Sciences, UI Dairy and Campus Dining, your food leftovers are transported to the UI Dairy where they are blended with livestock manure and composted into a soil amendment — which is applied to the fields where cows contently graze.
In fact, since the start of this program, countless dining patrons and more than 100 student volunteers have helped divert over 111 tons of food waste from the landfill to the UI Dairy. So why do we even care about composting? Why go through all this effort?
Consider this, leftovers and food scraps are the No.1 material sent to landfills. For example, in New York City, food scraps account for one-third of all residential trash and more food waste is thrown away than paper and plastic items.
All of those food scraps go to landfills, costing the city $336 million each year. However, diverting those food scraps and turning them into valuable compost could save New York City up to $100 million a year. Composting just makes sense. But there’s another side to this story, other than major cost savings. Climate change.
When food ends up in landfills, it becomes trapped and compacted by tons of garbage. While microorganisms eventually break these food scraps down, they do it via anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic digestion emits carbon dioxide and methane, which contributes up to 20 percent of the nations’ emissions of greenhouse gases annually.
Think about it, how much food do you actually throw away?
It might shock you to find out that the average American throws out almost 50 percent more food than the average American in 1970. This amounts to 40 percent of what our farmers grow, and averages 20 pounds of food per household per month.
So the next time you’re at the Idaho Commons, don’t look at your food scraps with disgust. Embrace the goodness that can come from composting with the Food and Farm Program. Plus, composting will make cows like Bessie all the happier as they peacefully graze the Palouse hills fertilized by your compost
Without the help and support of UI Dairy, Campus Dining, Agricultural Life Sciences and ASUI, Bessie wouldn’t be able to enjoy all the compost from UI students like you and me.
Wieteke Holthuijzen can be reached at [email protected]