In recent years, students have been clamoring for more opportunities to compost food waste on campus. For over five years, CWRU has been partnering with Bon Appetit to send all pre-consumer food scraps from the kitchen food preparation to the University Farm for composting. The compost that is created is then used to amend the soil for the food production operation at the Farm, much of which makes its way back to our plates in our dining facilities. Due to the changing landscape of composting opportunities in our region, we are excited to partner with Bon Appetit and many student organizations to pursue a potential post-consumer food scrap composting program within our student dining halls. In short, we are hopeful that the leftover plate waste from our students in Fribley and Leutner will be able to be collected and transported to the University Farm to increase our total percentage of waste diverted from the landfill towards a positive impact. In order to plan for a pilot post-consumer composting program, we will be conducting a data collection event at both dining halls during the week of February 5th. Student volunteers will be stationed at the tray returns in both Fribley and Leutner on alternating days to assist their peers to properly separate compostable plate waste from landfill materials. If you are interested in helping with this effort, use our Ideas page to contact us.