SOU gives food scraps to farm

Dec. 4—A few years ago, Southern Oregon University sought to reduce food waste by using smaller plates in its dining halls.

Now the Ashland institution seeks to close the consumer food loop by taking the waste collected in the preparation of food and, instead of throwing it away, shipping it to The Farm at SOU, which can turn the scraps into compost.

"It's a really great story, and especially as we source more of our produce from the SOU Farm, it creates a cyclical nature around the ecosystem we have on campus," said Daniel Kelly, marketing and sustainability coordinator for Aladdin's SOU operations.

One mantra of Aladdin Campus Dining, based out of Pennsylvania, is "doing good" through environmentally sustainable dining opportunities. These include Indigenous meal preparation and college and university dietitians' promotion of wellness through "plant-forward recipes."

"All of this has really been a partnership that we've been fostering between us and SOU to make sure that we're providing a good business relationship but also a good relationship for the environment," Kelly said.

The "doing good" for the environment mantra holds up via the relationship the company has with The Farm, going on its 10th year of operation.

Vincent Smith, an associate professor of environmental science and policy who helped found The Farm at SOU, located at 155 Walker Ave., welcomes the pre-consumer food scraps SOU's dining operations are willing to provide.

"It's been an idea for a long time — since the inception of the farm," said Smith, director of The Farm at SOU.

The new composting method didn't happen immediately, he explained, because The Farm needed time to grow and be profitable for students, who could act as reliable staff.

"We knew we could have someone there to be able to turn that compost, rather than sit in a pile that would attract rodents and bears," Smith said.

He also credited Kelly's willingness to create a composting program as the reason the initiative began in early November.

The initiative starts even before SOU starts feeding people in its campus dining halls or for special events.

"There's a lot of onions that have to be chopped; there's a lot of broccoli that has to be prepped — things like that," Kelly said. "Right now, we are collecting the waste that, formerly, would have just gone into the trash. The stems, the unusable bits of produce, we're collecting it in small bins that we have and collecting that at the end of the day into larger bins."

Kelly was describing a two-step collection process that begins with waste for compost being deposited in green bins adjacent to the Hawk's kitchen prep tables and moved to larger, secondary containers. Those are transported by truck Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to The Farm at SOU. Kelly estimates the effort translates into 150 pounds of new compost per week for The Farm.

"It has huge benefits for us," Smith said.

He meant that, aside from removing all of that waste each week from the garbage, Aladdin Campus Dining scraps give The Farm the right kind of compost.

"When we're trying to get compost, we want to have a mix of carbon-heavy materials and nitrogen-heavy materials," Smith said. "This creates an opportunity to have nitrogen and carbon together, which creates real compost. We don't have to put on artificial fertilizers."

Otherwise, he said, nitrogen would have to be shipped on pallets — which could cost $2,500 a year.

"This displaces that cost for us and reduces the carbon imprint," Smith said.

Smith noted the cyclical nature of the Aladdin-SOU Farm relationship, which continues when dining services plucks produce from the Walker Avenue property.

But just as Aladdin and SOU say they're "closing the loop" in their efforts to make dining services sustainable, another loop is closed for human resources. Kelly is an SOU alumnus.

"I was an environmental science and policy major. Vince was actually my adviser and chair of the program," Kelly said with a laugh. "It was a great program, and there was a lot of opportunity for me to be involved in sustainability on campus."

Then he graduated and found the Aladdin Campus Dining opportunity, for which he applied last spring.

"Now, here I am — so it really is a fun little circle we've all been in," Kelly said.

Reach reporter Kevin Opsahl at 541-776-4476 or kopsahl@rosebudmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KevJourno.