Original Article published in the Rider News:
http://comm.rider.edu/wordpress/2010/02/18/waste-program-takes-bite-out-of-trash/

by Melanie Hunter

Signs in the faculty dining room instruct on proper disposal of waste.

The kitchens on Rider’s Lawrenceville campus are now diverting all of their food waste from the garbage bins and sending it off campus to be turned into organic fertilizer. 

“It’s really a no-brainer,” said Melissa Greenberg, Rider’s sustainability coordinator. “We’re going to save money, it’s good for the environment, and the waste product is getting repurposed for business and residential use. Everybody wins.”

Currently, Americans throw away 25 percent of the food they prepare, and as a result, more than 25 million tons of food waste are sent to landfills each year. Rider sent 1,297 tons, or more than two and a half million pounds, of solid waste to the landfill during the 08-09 school year.

Rider’s new program went into effect at the beginning of this month. Aramark employees began training on Feb. 2, and the first separate pickup for food waste took place the same week. In that week alone, Rider prevented 6,560 pounds of food from being sent to the landfill.

The recycling process begins in the kitchens. Employees collect the leftovers from food preparation at both locations and from the conveyor belt at Daly’s. The food waste is then picked up by Rider’s garbage hauler, Waste Management (WM). WM brings the food waste to a plant owned by Converted Organics in Keasbey, N.J., a company that turns the material into organic fertilizer. The product is used on large-scale projects, such as golf courses, and is also sold in retail stores such as Whole Foods and Home Depot.

The United State produces more than 25 million tons of food waste annually. Most of that food ends up in landfills. Converted Organics, a Boston-based company with it’s manufacturing facility located in Woodbridge, is doing something about it. The plant receives more than 50 tons of food waste each week from regional restaurants and markets. It then uses high temperature liquid composting, a state-of-the-art microbial digestion technology, to convert the food waste into dry pellets and liquid concentrated organic fertilizers. (Video by Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger)