On the Morningside campus, composting has been the vital missing component of a consistent, aggressive Dining sustainability program, says Scott Wright, Vice President, Student Administrative Services.
 
 

Now, come January, that gap will be filled. A state-of-the-art composter will be housed at Ruggles Hall, marking a significant step in a complex multi-departmental and student collaboration that’s been on the table to varying degrees for about 10 years.
 
The Rocket, manufactured in the United Kingdom by the Tidy Planet Limited, is an 8’ by 2’ by 4’ cylinder using simple “brown and green” technology: Its inlet receives equal amounts of wood chips – the brown component, and food waste – the green, providing the necessary combination of carbon and nitrogen. When the inlet is closed, the ‘in vessel’ composting happens automatically.
 
Gerardo Soto, Managing Director of Nath Sustainable Solutions, the U.S. distributor of The Rocket, says that because “we now pretty much recycle everything else in this country, composting represents the last piece of the recycling puzzle.” Composting food scraps keeps them out of landfills where they emit harmful methane gas and can leach into and contaminate water. In not having to haul food waste to landfills, carbon emissions produced in transporting waste are also eliminated. The composting process is equally significant for its return of nutrients to the soil as fertilizer.
 
Numerous decisions leading to the choice of The Rocket represented “a huge process,” says Nilda Mesa, Assistant Vice President, Office of Environmental Stewardship. “Part of the reason it took so long was that when Columbia first started looking at composting, there were no models in New York City so we had to create the system from scratch.” The effort has involved Student Services, Housing, Dining, Facilities, Environmental Stewardship, Green Umbrella, and the EcoReps.
 
Research and planning, as well as a business plan for the composter, were spearheaded in large part by Todd Nelson, CC ’12. Wright says that with mentoring by his department and by the Office of Environmental Stewardship, Nelson and students in the Columbia Composting Coalition have developed goals, bylaws, accountability procedures and an actual working structure for the composter.
 
A basic question that needed answering in early discussions was whether it was possible to set up composting on an urban campus, Mesa says. “It was apparent early on that we had to have an ‘in vessel’ system for protection against rodents and odors as well as to avoid carbon emissions created by shipping out the compost.”
 
As the composter selection process evolved, Don Schlosser, Assistant Vice President, Campus Operations; Joyce Jackson, Executive Director, and Jose Rosa, supervisor, Housing Services; Helen Bielak, Manager, Surplus Reuse, and Catherine Resler, Manager, Recycling and Greenhouse Gas Reduction, OES; John Josten, Facilities; and Nelson visited area schools where The Rocket is in operation. Rippowam Cisqua, Bedford, N.Y., is a private school with pre-K through grade 12. The other is St. John’s University in Queens, the first school in the five boroughs of New York to use a composter.
 
Another early major step, Nelson says, was working with Josten, who handled the composting proposal permit from New York City and worked through the permitting process. Because the composter will be located out-of-doors, it required a shelter whose construction needed city approval.
 
Several months ago, when Wright was satisfied that all the “logistical nuts and bolts” had been addressed, he validated The Rocket’s selection and purchase that will be funded by his department “as a pilot and a test.”
 
For Nelson and the Columbia Composting Coalition, this means that while the composter funding is taken care of, its operation and maintenance are 100 percent student-run. The group has already arranged with a landscaping company to obtain free wood chips in exchange for the compost, which the landscapers will use for Manhattan rooftop gardens.
 
The food waste – 400 lbs. per week – will rely completely on student contribution of food scraps. That’s one of the reasons the Ruggles site was chosen because its 200 residents all have their own kitchens, Wright says, and Hogan and Broadway Halls are close by. Residence halls on 113th and 114th Sts., and Broadway, with about 650 additional suite kitchens are also nearby.
 
“We wanted to get students to collaborate on the basis of where they live and eat,” says Joyce Jackson, Executive Director, Housing Services, who has also worked closely with the Composting Coalition. Further development of the composting program – working with Dining Services, for example, will depend on the success of the pilot spring term.
 
Soto says the composter is one of very few in an urban setting and the first for an institution of higher learning in Manhattan. “This is huge for Columbia,” he says, “because Manhattan is Manhattan.”
 
Because Nath Sustainable Solutions is based nearby in Tarrytown, N.Y., Nelson says that Soto will not only assist with the delivery and setup of The Rocket, but also help the Composting Coalition team with ongoing training.
 
Currently, Nelson says, the team is building its public relations and outreach programs and materials so students will know what to expect and how to take part in the composting when they return from semester break. This will include specifics such as exactly what food waste can be composted, and the composter’s hours of operation.  “We’re going to build an email platform so students can reach out to us. All of this will be rolled out and made public while we are privately testing the machine, building enthusiasm and excitement before opening it up to student use,”  Nelson says.
 
Wright says that student-to-student communication will raise necessary awareness about composting. “I think we’re going to get this because of the students’ core values,” he says.
 
Right now, Wright has what he describes as an open question: “If this is a big success, what next? Would we say, ‘let’s try to replicate it in couple of other places? The East Campus area? Faculty House?’
 
“It’s an exciting question I hope we have to answer.”
 
The Morningside composter will be the second such effort on a Columbia campus. Summer 2009 marked the beginning of the “backyard compost project” at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., says Kim Martineau, science writer at LDEO. The project got under way with more than $400 in donations from scientists and staffers.
 
The three-bin system, built of wood, chicken wire and fiberglass, receives from 60 to 100 gallon containers of food scraps each week from cafeteria food preparation and lunch scraps from two campus buildings. “We’re planning to harvest our first batch of compost over the winter, in time for the 2012 gardening season,” Martineau says.