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It’s springtime and half-eaten burgers, along with other leftover fare at the University of Maryland, will be pushing up the daisies on campus.
A major pilot project has been set up by the FM department and food provider Dining Services to covert waste food into soil additives similar to peat.
According to a report by the independent student newspaper Diamond Back, two machines are being tested. One will convert food and other bio-degradable waste into water.
The other, a “soil amendment machine”, will transform solid food waste into a fertilser for campus flowerbeds.
“We’re just really trying to do something better for the campus, better for the students and better for the environment,” said Dining Services director Colleen Wright-Riva.
At the end of the 60-day trial programme they will spend between £13,500 and £20,000 on one of the machines.
The programme is a continuation of sustainability efforts where over the winter Dining Services purchased pulping machines that combine food waste with napkins and biodegradable containers. The by-products will be transferred into the new machines to be converted into water or soil amendment.
The soil amendment strategy is particularly attractive to university officials because it would form a “closed loop,” using once useless waste as fertiliser for the university’s plants and trees.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on the amount [of waste] that we’re currently putting into the landfill,” said Sandra Dykes, assistant director for Administrative Services for Building and Landscape Services. “We’re figuring right now over 300 tons a year is going into the landfill that we have the potential of capturing into either the waste to water or the soil amendment.”
Investment payback is expected to be around five years, said Wright-Riva.
Dining Services will likely save money and as a result students will see savings reflected in their dining costs.
Dining Services would save money by cutting down on trash that costs between £26 and £40 per ton to haul away.
This article was also featured on http://www.fm-world.co.uk |
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