By Mackenzie Shields

All of SUNY Oswego’s dining halls and retail locations are now composting pre-consumer waste, said Sarah Smelko, a graduate student interning at the sustainability office.

“It’s a big undertaking, so we launched it in the fall semester of ‘21,” Smelko said. Composting started in Pathfinder dining hall and Lake Effect Cafe during sustainability week.

They added two more locations before expanding the initiative in the beginning of the spring semester to include all dining halls and retail dining locations.

Smelko said that within the next two weeks, the initiative will reach 10,000 pounds of compost. The composting initiative matched the composting from the fall within two weeks of collection in the spring.

The director of resident dining, Daniel Siddons, said that waste from food preparation is put in buckets, which the dining halls and retail locations prepare. Each morning, someone from the sustainability department then comes and picks it up.

Smelko said that the next step is to take it to the composting site, which is located at Bristol Hill Transfer Station in Fulton. Smelko said that the station is a landfill, but also has composting piles.

The department drops off the waste approximately once per week. Smelko said that about 1,000 pounds of waste are collected weekly.

This waste would have formerly ended up in a landfill. 

“It’s now going to really awesome compost piles that are being filtered and churned every day,” Smelko said.

The compost piles not only reduce waste, but help contribute to community development as well. Smelko said that the compost is available for free to Oswego residents, and that some comes back to campus for gardening.

“Being mindful of our waste is something sometimes we miss out on, because we’re disconnected from putting something in the trash can and knowing where it ends up,” Smelko said.

Siddons said that he thinks that there could be improvements in terms of educating students about waste management in the dining halls. He said that signage might help to raise awareness.

Though post-consumer waste is not being composted yet, both departments hope that they might be able to expand that direction in the future.

Smelko said that amount of waste is a lot to handle, and “then you’re dealing with bacterial issues, and you need sanitizing systems.”

Siddons said that to do this, they may need to cooperate with another company because of the amount of additional waste that this would involve.

“However, we’re pretty well equipped to actually be able to take all of our waste. Our napkins are compostable, and then even things like chicken bones, they’re able to handle that and compost those as well,” Siddons said.

He added that the napkins in the dining halls are compostable, and that they have now begun to use compostable paper condiment cups in place of the plastic ones.

One of the next projects for the two offices involves tree tapping on campus to produce maple syrup. Smelko said that they hope to start this on Feb. 21, though it is weather-dependent. They would then be able to work with the dining halls to serve the maple syrup produced from the sap.

Siddons said that dining locations also take additional steps to reduce waste, such as cooking food in small batches so there is not too much excess, and that managers keep a close eye on how much food is actually being eaten.

“It is our hope that by focusing on this composting and the sustainability and physically having to put your food into a special bin that people would think twice about taking extra helpings that they don’t intend to eat,” Siddons said. He added that this would also reduce costs.

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