Editor’s Note: This is the last in a two-part series detailing the University’s campus sustainability efforts.
What the University’s blossoming sustainability initiatives need more than anything is a fresh crop of money trees.
Nearly every department has dealt with heavy blows because of state budget cuts to higher education, and sustainability is no exception. Still, recycling, composting and waste diversion are on the rise.
In 2005, LSU recycled about 300 tons of wood, organics and other recyclable materials. Total recycling has since grown about eightfold. Last year, the University recycled about 2,500 tons of material, although it has leveled off recently due to budget constraints, said LSU Recycling Manager Andres Harris.
“If we buy less, we recycle less, because we have less materials to dispose,” Harris said.
As long as students get hungry, though, disposable material won’t be the issue for LSU Dining.
Many students fail to finish their food at the all-you-can-eat dining halls. Employees then collect the dirty dishes, scraping the wasted food into trash cans.
“All that, for now, is being thrown away. And that could be composted in the future,” Harris said.
The problem, according to LSU Dining Resident District Manager David Heidke, is finding someone to pick up the hulking piles of leftover noodles, cakes and pizza crusts, among other foods.
“We would be all over that,” Heidke said, referring to composting. “Our only challenge is that we need an outlet. Be it recycling, be it composting — we can do all of that, but who do we give this to?”
“Ourselves,” AgCenter professor Carl Motsenbocker would reply, well-aware of the budgetary issues, but still eager to make it happen.
Motsenbocker teaches a service-learning course that allows students to pick their own semesterlong sustainability projects. One semester, a group decided to collect the waste from the 459 Commons for six weeks and compost it at the AgCenter’s W.A. Callegari Environmental Center to find out the logistics of composting on campus full-time.
“They figured out how much time it took, transport costs, labor costs — but the main thing was the approximate acreage needed to compost,” Motsenbocker said, which turned out to be about three acres — space currently unavailable.
Composting doesn’t just mean dumping food into a big mixer and churning out usable fertilizer — that would be toxic. A precise ratio of green waste (food) to brown waste (plants) — is needed to make the compost suitable for use.
Facility Services already recycles most of the carbon-based brown waste, such as leaves and sticks, Harris said. “Grass cuttings, pulled flower beds, trees — all that is being compost. The only thing left is food.”
One experimental project that began in February has seen nearly 200 tons of pine shavings composted from the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine.
The pine shavings serve as the bedding for the barn animals at the Vet School, which means they’re covered in animal excretions and other stray material as well, Harris said. But in his eyes, the project has been a huge success.
To do the same for the food waste at the University would cost at least several hundred thousand dollars, both Harris and Motsenbocker agreed.
Right now, the food mostly goes to landfills, at $20 per pound, Harris said. “Based on budget limitations right now, we cannot move forward with food [composting] until we find the source of funds to purchase that equipment.”
There are other issues with sustainability besides money, though, such as liability requirements for farmers holding back the University from accepting more local producers.
Currently, about 3 percent of the produce used by LSU Dining is locally grown.
“I wish it was 100 percent,” Heidke said, noting the higher costs as additional hurdles.
Sweet potatoes and ice cream are two local staples currently available at the dining halls. But forward progress probably won’t happen unless the University partners with another company or organization to raise the number of local farmers in the system.
“To some people, the cost doesn’t matter,” said Campus Sustainability Manager Denise Newell, “Because what they spend is going back into the local economy. It’s better for the environment and it’s better for your body.”
In 2008, LSU Dining removed trays from the dining halls, cutting dishwasher energy consumption in half, Heidke said. The same year, it began recycling the used cooking oils, partnering with the AgCenter to create biodiesel fuel.
LSU Dining also promotes Project Clean Plate for six-week periods near the beginning of every semester by encouraging students to reduce the amount of food wasted.
“It’s not about limiting what they eat, but we want to limit the waste,” Heidke said.
Recently, LSU Dining began offering hard plastic to-go boxes called eco-clamshells at Bayou Bistreaux and On-the-Geaux in the Student Union, hoping to further limit food waste.
The University has cut total waste by a third, from about 7,500 tons in 2007 to just under 5,000 tons last year. And almost every year, the percentage of waste diverted to recycling goes up.
As of late October, LSU has landfilled 4,180 tons of waste, while recycling about 2,300 tons of other materials — a 55 percent diversion rate — something Harris, Newell, and many others in the sustainability community are quite proud of.
“Once you start [composting at cafeterias], you also have the potential to help any event on campus handling food,” Harris said, his voice perking up at the possibilites of composting at Tiger Stadium.
“Imagine how much we can tackle.”
