Where does your food go?
kellydrummond February 9th, 2012
Hasbrouck Dining Hall is the only dining hall on the SUNY New Paltz campus. It is a tray-less buffet style dining hall and on your way out you drop off your dishes and silverware in the dish room. But have you ever wondered what happens to your food scraps after you drop off your plates? Well I had the chance to take a behind the scenes tour of the facility and found a comprehensive composting plan.
Composting is the act of taking food scraps, yard clippings and other organic waste and combining it to create humus which is a natural fertilizer. The food scraps and other materials when combined decompose together in a pile or in a large machine and when they break down the resulting product has a high amount of nutrients which are perfect for gardening. Even in the dead of winter the middle of a compost pile is actually very hot because of the gases released in the process of decomposition.
In Hasbrouck Dining Hall the food scraps are scraped from the plates into 55 gallon barrels lined with biodegradable, compostable bags. Leftover food prep scraps from fruit, vegetables, and meat are placed in composting bins. Also included in the compost are liquids such as milk or soups. Hasbrouck does everything they can to freeze the leftovers to serve again but still food waste is produced from food scraps and liquids. Hasbrouck has also just started a food recovery program to donate the leftover food to Queens Galley, a local soup kitchen, in Kingston. Even more green composting bins are seen behind where the food is served which when all combined creates an environment geared towards composting as much as possible. Hasbrouck feeds about 3,000 people every day and 800 to 1,000 pounds of food waste is produced every day! On Sunday and Monday the dining hall typically composts about 16 barrels of food waste. Royal Recycling are the haulers that take away the composting to Greenway, a composting facility in Poughkeepsie, and they come six days a week to transport the food waste.
Taking a tour of the composting in practices was great and it is plainly seen how hard the dining hall is working to compost as many food waste as possible. The whole facility has an environmentally friendly mindset and while I was taking the tour I saw many dining hall workers actively putting food scraps into green composting bins.
To see pictures of this behind the scenes tour please go to: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150525150427750.373625.195052437749&type=1 and don’t forget to “like” New Paltz Recycles while you’re there!
