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It wasn’t until the waste-management crisis of the early 1990s that researchers began experimenting with large-scale composting programs to help institutions manage their waste locally. "In 1991 the landfill closed in Tompkins County," explains Darling. that, we’d dumped our garbage for free. Suddenly we were looking at having to pay a $145-per-ton tipping fee." At the same time the physical plant staff was looking for a way to deal with the problem, students in the Ithaca College Environmental Society were thinking about ways to make the campus more environmentally friendly. Workers and ICES students got together and decided to focus first on paper recycling. That program began in 1991; now paper, metal, glass, and cardboard are collected in all buildings. "We realized that the next heaviest item in the trash was food scrap," explains Darling. A College steering committee decided to focus on reducing the amount of food entering the waste stream. After investigating different methods, the group decided to develop an aerated static pile system. In an ASP system, food scraps are collected in bins at each dining hall and transported to the composting facility. There the scraps are mixed with wood chips and formed into large piles, about as high as a person. Plastic perforated pipes are run through, and fans blow air into the piles at intervals, maintaining the ideal temperature and moisture conditions for invisible microbes. The microbes do the real work, converting food scraps to rich brown compost in about six weeks using this system. The compost is then cured outside for two years to allow harmful salts to leach off. When that’s done, the grounds crews use the resulting "brown gold," as gardeners refer to compost, in place of expensive chemical fertilizers. "We were sending 400 to 450 tons of food a year to the landfill," Darling says. "This past year composting reduced that amount, saving us about $15,000 in tipping fees. And compost holds water better than other materials, so we’re using less irrigation." "Right now we’re using compost on all the campus flower beds instead of fertilizer," says Rick Couture, assistant director of physical plant. "That’s saving us about $1,000 a year." Couture points out that composting is a project involving work by many hands. "We’ve been very lucky to have the assistance of our food service company, Sodexho Marriott. They’re committed to the goals of this institution, not only in saving money, but also in helping out the environment."
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