UW-Green Bay sustainability intern managing pine chips and dining food scraps used for compost
Bryce Oysti, the University Union’s Sustainability Intern, is turning food scraps from Campus Dining into nutrient-rich compost. An Instagram post tells us how it works:
- Chartwells staff bring food scraps (from food prep & food scraped off people’s plates) to the loading dock in five-gallon buckets.
- Bryce weighs them & dumps them into the composter with two buckets of wood chips for every bucket of food waste.
- The augur churns it all together for microbes to break down, and air is vented through a wood chip biofilter to reduce odors.
Just recently, a contractor took down several large pine trees close to Wood Hall and the stumps and limbs were turned into wood chips and added the piles of chips that supply the composter. Because of the aromatic “piney” smell, chips in the biofilter are being replaced with the pine for the compost mix. In a couple of months, the compost will be ready to use on campus for flower beds, planting new trees and for the greenhouse.
