The Daily Tar Heel

Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: University

Media Credit: DTH/Zach Hoffman Senior Whitney Marks recycles her water bottle in the cans between the Undergraduate Library and Wilson Library on Tuesday. UNC Facilities Services manages campus recycling of materials such as office paper, newspapers, magazines, bottles, cans, food and cardboard.

One person's leftover food is another person's topsoil.

UNC reached a record high last year in recycling food waste through a partnership between Carolina Dining Services and Judy D. Brooks Contractor Inc.

"Any leftover food on students' plates is taken away to be composted," said Scott Myers, director of food and vending. "Any food can be composted. They even take the meats; they don't have to separate things out."

Brooks Contractor, a Chatham County composting service, in turn sells the resulting post-composting products to various agricultural and landscaping companies.

"No. 1 is, we try to provide a good compost to the community," said Amy Brooks, a Brooks Contractor employee. "Food waste is a big part of that."

She said topsoil quality is increased when food waste is added to the compost mix.

"You take all that disgusting, smelly stuff and turn it into something beautiful," Brooks said. "It's like black gold."

The Top of Lenoir had a 64.5 percent recycling rate, and Rams Head Dining Hall had a 54.7 percent recycling rate, according to UNC's Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling.

The overall campus had a 43 percent recycling rate - the all-time high for UNC.

"I think they're doing a great job," said B.J. Tipton, manager of UNC's Solid Waste Program for the waste reduction office.

"People don't know what a great job they're doing at the dining halls," she said. "It's hard to know until you look at the actual numbers."

Tipton said UNC composted 428 tons of food waste last year.

"It's diverting a whole lot of waste from landfilling," Tipton said. "That's huge - the amount that was diverted."

CDS already is involved in year-round efforts to cut back on waste. The move toward sustainability on campus began in 1999.

Since then, Brooks Contractor has been picking up food waste from various UNC dining locations and transforming it into topsoil.

"It's part of the overall sustainability effort," Myers said. "We're trying to increase sustainability, trying to make everything in our operation as sustainable as we can."

UNC recycles in several campus locations including the Friday Center, The Beach Cafe and Cafe McColl. Tipton said officials want to add other locations.

N.C. farmers and gardeners aren't the only ones who benefit from UNC's leftover food.

Food that never makes it onto students' trays is taken to the local Inter-faith Community House, Myer said.

CDS' relationship with IFC makes good use of food that's still edible, Tipton said.

"That's taking the prepared food that can be eaten to people who need it," Tipton said. "That's the best of both worlds."



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools