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University recognized for composting initiative

Written by Andrew Williamson

Tuesday, 04 September 2007 11:05 PM

The university received three awards in August for its composting program — a joint effort between the university and the city of Arlington. The university received three awards in August for its composting program — a joint effort between the university and the city of Arlington.
The program collects food waste from dining services and the Starbucks locations in the University Center and on South Cooper Street. Fallen leaves from campus vegetation are also collected. All of this is decomposed into a soil supplement to help plants on campus grow, master composter John Darling said.
The goal is to reduce the amount of waste the university sends to the landfill, said Craig Powell, Environmental Health and Safety Office director. He said the idea is that hauling less garbage to landfills and using compost instead of fertilizer could save the university money.
Until recently, this was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process where garbage was hauled to the composting grounds, put into piles and left for up to two months to decompose, Darling said. Those piles had to be regularly rotated or turned because the decomposition occurred on the inside of the piles, he said.
The composting process became much more efficient when the university received a $135,595 grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The university purchased a Bobcat tractor and a composting machine that, by Darling’s estimate, increased the amount of compost produced by eight to 10 times.
The composting machine, about 8 feet tall and 10 feet long, resembles the rotating back end of a cement mixer truck without the wheels.
Food and organic waste is put into biodegradable bags and loaded into the machine, which heats the garbage to about 160 degrees, pumps water into the garbage and rotates it two or three times a day in its cylinder-shaped chamber.
“The amazing thing is we don’t get any odor from this side of [the composting machine],” Powell said, gesturing toward houses about 20 to 30 feet from the machine.
The awards included a leadership award from the Recycling Alliance of Texas and a leadership award from the Greater DFW Recycling Alliance. On Sept. 14, the university will receive the Environmental Vision Award from the North Texas Committee Recycling Alliance, said Becky Valentich, Environmental Health and Safety Office safety specialist.
The university can avoid paying to haul as much waste to the landfill because the machine produces more compost than would have been possible before. This can save the university money that would have been put toward hauling garbage and fertilizing plants and trees.
The organizations who granted the awards saw the use of the machine as innovative, and that led to the university winning the awards, Valentich said.
Although Powell believes the composting program is environmentally beneficial, he also thinks there needs to be an economic incentive for it to continue.
“As much as I’m a treehugger and a fish-kisser, you have to show people this makes good business sense,” he said.

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