Campus Composting Dedication Planned for Earth Week

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Zoe Teague beside one of the Earth Tubs that will compost food waste from campus residence halls.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – “Think globally, act locally” is more than a catch phrase for University of Arkansas honors student Zoe Teague, who has played a leading role in an effort to compost the 200,000-plus pounds of food waste produced each year by residence halls on campus.

“That’s a conservative estimate, and more than 90 percent of it is post-consumer food waste – items that students put on their plates but didn’t eat,” said Teague, an environmental soil and water science major in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and a member of the Honors College.

At 1 p.m. Monday, April 18, the beginning of Earth Week on campus, Teague and a group of university administrators, faculty, staff and students who have supported the initiative will dedicate two Earth Tubs that have the capacity to process 300 pounds of organic waste per day. The dedication will take place at the University of Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center, a unit of the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture, which will benefit from having rich compost readily available for the center’s experimental plots.

“This dedication caps a five-year effort by university leaders to compost campus food waste, and I’m so proud of Zoe for the work she had done to make this dream a reality,” said Jennie Popp, a professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness and an Honors College faculty member. Popp launched the current composting project with a feasibility study carried out by Teague and five other students in fall 2008. She is directing Teague’s honors thesis, which documents the composting project with a full cost-benefit analysis and business plan.

“The food waste-to-compost project is a perfect thesis topic for Zoe,” Popp said. “It allows her to apply scientific methods from both her environmental sciences major and her agribusiness minor but it is much more than an academic exercise; it has real application to the University of Arkansas.”

“This is a great example of Honors College students and faculty working together to tackle research that has a real-world impact,” said Bob McMath, dean of the Honors College. “Zoe’s honors thesis can provide a model for other campuses that want to start similar programs.”

 The composting project provides a case study in collaboration across campus, ranging from Chartwell’s Food Service, which will collect and pulp the food waste, to the Fay Jones School of Architecture materials shop, which will contribute sawdust to temper the compost. The cost of the “gently used” Earth Tubs and their installation, which exceeded $16,000, was funded by the systemwide Division of Agriculture, the department of facilities management, the office of the provost, the Associated Student Government, and the Residents’ Interhall Congress. Looking back, Teague said, she is especially heartened by the unanimous support from student groups who voted to fund the project.

“Students do care about sustainability,” she said. “We want to make our campus greener, and we’ve shown it with this project.”

Teague’s Statewide Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) grant funded a research trip to the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, which uses Earth Tubs to compost campus food waste. Teague also received research funding from Bumpers College. Ongoing support for composting will be provided by Chartwells Food Service, facilities management and the Division of Agriculture.

The University of Arkansas will celebrate Earth Day with a number of events including this dedication of a food waste to compost facility on campus. There will also be a volunteer stream cleanup of College Branch, a movie series, vendor fair and speakers on the Central Quad, all during the week of April 18-22.