The shell of an egg. The peel of an orange. The leftovers that sit in the fridge too long. These all contribute to food waste, which Americans generate 92 billion pounds of each year, according to Feeding America.
“Food waste is an unpalatable truth,” said Ann Wilkie, a research professor at UF’s BioEnergy and Sustainable Technology Laboratory.
Wilkie started the Compost Cooperative and Gardens, an education and outreach program to promote sustainability at UF’s Energy Research and Education Park. It gives students and the Gainesville community the freedom to compost their food waste and learn about its environmental impacts.
The CCG holds orientations for about 100 people each semester, Wilkie said. People find out about the CCG primarily through word of mouth, though they also have a website and Instagram and Facebook pages.
Crossing the gate into the CCG seems like stepping into a world entirely separate from typical campus life. It’s quiet and tranquil. There’s hammocks and swings, as well as a cone-shaped greenhouse rising from the Earth nearby. Sitting in a semicircle around a rainwater collection system are the CCG’s six compost bins.
Also at the CCG is a pollinator garden, garden rows and a greenhouse. Among the greenery are five garden boxes, which are like personal gardens and are open at no cost to CCG members.
One garden box is Ryan Champiny’s, a lush, green rectangle filled with vegetables like collard greens and kale. Champiny is a 30-year-old third-year graduate student studying soil science and also serves as the CCG’s garden manager.
In the planting stage of gardening, Champiny said she uses a palm-sized amount of compost for each plant. Champiny gives away a lot of the food she grows to other graduate students, but she said she personally likes to keep the kale for smoothies.
Katya Kasprzak, a 22-year-old UF environmental management in agriculture and natural resources senior, has been the CCG’s compost manager since July. She doesn’t produce much food waste herself, but said she likes that she has the ability to compost the waste she does create. Each Friday, she leads the CCG orientations with other student leaders, like Champiny or Amina Cabric, the social media and outreach manager.
“Having the chance to teach people about sustainability is really cool and empowering to other people, because they get to make those changes in their own communities — in their own lives,” Kasprzak said.
Part of the CCG philosophy is that there should be less food waste, and the waste that is created is better composted than in a landfill. Food waste in landfills contributes to greenhouse gases and the production of leachate, a toxic liquid contaminating groundwater.
The CCG started in 2009 with just one 65-gallon compost bin, but it has since grown to six bins. At orientations, Kasprzak takes students, faculty and community members through the practice of composting, from chopping up food waste to mixing the compost. Once the compost is finished, which can take months, they sift it into three bins separated by size. The fine compost looks like dirt, and the coarse compost has visible twigs and chunks.
Different composting facilities will accept different types of waste, but the CCG accepts all food waste, including produce and citrus, as well as small amounts of meat and dairy, Kasprzak said. There should be a two-to-one ratio of shredded paper to food waste, because the paper helps to absorb some of the food’s moisture.
Gabby Rutan, a 21-year-old UF environmental management in agriculture and natural resources senior, attended an orientation on Friday after hearing about the CCG from her academic adviser over a year ago. She went with her friend Lindsey Malcolm, a 23-year-old UF plant science junior.
Malcolm said she’s interested in the processes behind composting and wants to come back to the CCG with her own food waste to compost.
“It’s more of a natural process rather than making the synthetic material for fertilizer,” Malcolm said. “I think it’s really cool seeing so many people come together and so many people with different backgrounds conversing and discussing what they like about compost.”
Contact Corey Fiske at cfiske@alligator.org.
