The South Fork dining hall at Boise State serves about 850 students a day, generating about 47,000 pounds of food waste annually. A new tool coming this summer could keep all of that food waste from ending up in the landfill.
“It's a great place to try out a new food diversion process,” explains Kat Davis, Sustainability Manager for Boise State University.
Food waste on campus basically falls into one of three categories: unused food from the preparation process which can be distributed to students needing help getting enough to eat, scraps left over from the preparation process (called ‘back-of-house’ waste), and what’s left on plates after a meal (‘front-of-house waste).
At the busiest dining hall on campus, the Boise River Cafe, a food ‘pulper’ has reduced the volume of waste going to the landfill by about 80 percent, Davis says.
“The food waste is really heavy because it's mostly water,” she explained. The pulper extracts the water from the solid waste.
Recently, Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality awarded BSU a $73,200 Sustainable Materials Management grant toward the purchase of a food waste digester, also known as an anaerobic digester.
Different from a pulper, a digester uses microorganisms to break down the food waste into a liquid, which is then pumped right into the local sewer system, without any physical waste left behind to carry to a dumpster or drive to a landfill.
What goes into the sewer doesn’t require special treatment at the end of the line, either.
“They have an anaerobic digester at the watershed that uses the nutrients from the solids that go there and turns that into biogas. And so this would just contribute more of those nutrients into that system,” Davis explained.
Students will also have a role. Unlike at the River Cafe, where back-of-house staff separate waste for the pulper, diners in South Fork will need to do their own sorting before they drop off their trays; food waste in one bin, recyclables in another and landfill waste in a third.
“So far, the community has been really excited about this project,” Davis said. “It showcases a whole new solution to food waste that we haven't tried before, and that's really the goal."
The purchase process for the digester is underway and Davis hopes to have it installed by this summer,assuming supply chain issues don’t get in the way. An education campaign is planned to help students make the most of the device.
The grant Boise State received to purchase the digester is the largest ever provided for a project like this, says Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Pollution Prevention & Continuous Improvement Lead Ben Jarvis.
Sustainable waste management grants have been awarded for more than a decade, but federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency typically maxed out between $25,000- $30,000 and funds were only intermittently available.
Right now, DEQ has nearly $250,000 in Sustainable Materials Management grant funding still available and the agency extended a deadline for grant applications to April 29, 2022. Ideal projects for grant funding are focused on reusing materials or diversion from landfills, but Jarvis explained DEQ wants to see a broad range of ideas.
“This gives us an idea of what people need, what are people thinking about, what are the community’s needs,” he explained. “That knowledge alone, even if we don’t award the project, is extremely helpful, so we really encourage people to apply.”
Back at Boise State, the digester will also help provide more specific data on the amount of food waste generated.
Davis said she’s excited about the long-term opportunities to become more efficient with food on campus.
“If it works out well, then I would love to see something like this implemented in other areas on campus. I want to make sure that we do follow the EPA food hierarchy recovery pyramid that focuses on source reduction and feeding hungry people before we get to these industrial and compost solutions; but as an opportunity for food that's not edible, I think [a digester] is a great start to thinking about how to keep things out of our landfill and being able to recycle the water and nutrients that comes from the food that we eat.”
Boise State Public Radio is an editorially independent service of Boise State University.
