Rachel LeRoy, Campus Carrier Staff Reporter
It has been one month since the Berry Green Team, Season’s Harvest and the Dining Hall teamed up to create a compost, and the future is looking ripe.
The compost, which is located across Highway 27 at Season’s Harvest’s operation behind the Berry Police Department, has multiple school-wide benefits.
The compost will directly fertilize Season’s Harvest’s crops in the future, and it will also help lower the Dining Hall’s waste, as well as reduce Berry’s carbon footprint.
Six years ago, College President Stephen R. Briggs signed the Presidents’ Climate Commitment, which states that Berry’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2050. This compost, which took seven months of brainstorming, is a step in that direction.
Junior Emma Childs, head of the Green Team, said composting was one of the Green Team’s major goals when they started brainstorming in August and they realized there was great potential to partner with the Dining Hall.
“Prior to this collaboration, all the raw food waste from the Dining Hall was being thrown away,” Childs said. “We proposed that the Dining Hall staff divert the easily compostable material—we are starting small—from the waste stream to be made into compost to be used by Season’s Harvest for their garden.”
Food Service Director Fraser Pearson said he had concerns when first approached by Childs several months ago, but after working through the logistics the process has been simpler than he thought.
Legally, there were health department requirements that had to be overcome, Pearson said.
The Green Team tried to make it as easy on the Dining Hall staff as possible, but things like hairnet requirements and jewelry restrictions make it easier for the Dining Hall to collect the food scraps themselves and then place them in containers for the Green Team and Season’s Harvest to pick up daily.
In just one month, the compost has come a long way. On average, 100 pounds of waste are captured each day by the Dining Hall staff and then carted over to the compost. The amount startled Pearson.
“It even shocked me,” Pearson said. “I called [Childs] and said, ‘We’re going to need a bigger boat!’”
Chances Waite, CEO of Season’s Harvest, said she looks forward to becoming a more sustainable student enterprise and incorporating nutrition to their farm plots.
“It is by no means a beautiful project… it is an awful-smelling, nutritious goodness for the soil,” said Waite, “but the possibilities are endless.”