Ohio University, located in Athens, Ohio, has been processing more than five tons of food waste daily. In four to five months, what most would consider garbage is transformed into the nutrient-rich soil used for campus landscaping.
Each ton of waste that the Ohio University Compost Facility processes is a ton diverted from landfills where discarded food can become buried under other solid waste and create harmful methane emissions that contribute to climate warming. In this way, composting is a circular process where waste material is kept in circulation and reused rather than discarded.
“Food comes out of the ground, we eat it, we process it, we throw it away, we compost it, and then we return it to the ground. It’s a very circular process,” said Ohio University director of sustainability Sam Crowl. “The problem with having food waste in the landfill is all that organic material gets buried, and researchers tell me that when it’s about a meter deep it attracts bacteria that produce methane gas. That’s the greenhouse gas we’re trying to avoid by doing this whole process.”
Beyond being good for the environment, OHIO’s Compost Facility also serves as an important educational model – spreading awareness of sustainable practices, allowing students to witness a circular process first-hand and providing them with a big-picture look at what’s possible in the realm of sustainability.
Compost bins are collected five days a week and taken to the facility where they are weighed for data collection purposes then raised up and dumped into one of the two vessels. The fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells and other organic waste are then mixed with wood chips to create a chemically balanced mixture. This mixture is constantly turned and heated to create an oxygen-rich environment that aids the decomposition process and further reduces bad bacteria.
After spending around two weeks moving through various zones in the vessel, the resulting material is taken outside where it is cured in long outdoor piles called windrows for 90 to 180 days. While curing, the piles are still turned to keep them sufficiently oxygenated. A windrow turner hitched to a tractor is pulled across the rows to flip the whole compost pile in only about 10 minutes. In the windrows, the composted material starts to resemble the high-quality soil that will eventually be used around campus in flowerbeds, gardens, trees and intramural fields – no fertilizer required.
Published April 2025