Developing a Zero Carbon Footprint Composting System Involving Students From Across Campus.

The MU Bradford Research Center (BREC) has a substantial Research, Extension and Education mission involving many disciplines within and outside of the College of Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR).  As part of the research and extension activities vegetables are grown and then sold to MU’s Campus Dining who has an interest in utilizing their food wastes to produce compost.  Each day Campus Dining serves approximately 8500 meals/day generating approximately 4.5 oz of waste per meal.  When calculated over the entire year this is approximately 270 tons of food waste per year that winds up in the local landfill.   Food waste has a C:N ratio of approximately 20:1.  In order to achieve a final ratio of 30:1, animal bedding and manure from the MU Horse Farm is mixed in a 1:1 ratio (animal bedding:food waste) to achieve optimum compost consistency.  An Aerated Static Pile (ASP) system to compost the waste material aerobically was developed and will emphasize a ‘low-tech, low-input’ approach to composting.  A portion of the approximately 175 tons of compost produced annually can be applied to vegetable crops at BREC with the remainder marketed to the local community.  These vegetable crops can then be sold back to Campus Dining.  Each portion of this system represents student involvement from across disciplines including designing the ASP system, picking up and composting food wastes, growing vegetables and marketing vegetables and compost, essentially making this a “closed loop system”.  To make this system “green” the waste vegetable oil from Campus Dining is being converted into biodiesel by students to run the trucks that pickup food wastes and deliver the food to Campus Dining, operation of the compost system, and operating the tractors that grow the vegetables.