When students throw their leftovers into the plastic bins and tin pails of the dining halls, they only see the first step of a much longer journey that the food waste undertakes. In an effort to demystify the process, the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability (CEEDS) led a group of interested students to Vanguard Renewables’ depackaging facility in Agawam, Mass. to witness the next step of the composting process.
Walking into the main room, the Organics Receiving Area, the pungent smell of decomposing food was striking. Motors ran ceaselessly, pushing crates of unwanted, excess and expired food through massive machines. The main attraction was the Turbo Separator apparatus, affectionately known as “THOR.”
Once waste enters the 45,000-pound machine, the force of 52 spinning twenty-pound hammers turns any food and organic material into a slurry while only partially breaking down the plastic and cardboard packaging. In the next step, the material is filtered so that the food slurry and packaging waste are separated, the latter being sent to an incinerator or recycling facility. The food slurry, on the other hand, continues its journey, stored in tanks on the premises before being sent out to digesters in six locations throughout the New England region.
At these digesters, the slurry undergoes anaerobic digestion, a process in which anaerobic bacteria — bacteria that don’t need oxygen — break down organic matter such as food or animal waste. During decomposition, gas is produced. This gas, known as biogas, is composed primarily of methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and water vapor. It’s compositionally the same as natural gas and can be used in the same ways — burned directly as fuel or used to generate electricity.
The other product created during anaerobic digestion is digestate: residual material left over after the bacteria process the waste. The solid portions of this material can be used for animal bedding and as a base for bio-based products like bioplastics while the nutrient-rich liquid can be used as fertilizer.
The digesters capture the biogas and digestate produced, allowing the company to sell both byproducts. Through this process, food that would otherwise be wasted is turned into gas to fuel homes and useful materials for production and farming.
As with any seemingly perfect system, however, there are pitfalls to anaerobic digestion.
The first is limited scope. As of now, the depackaging facility where Smith sends its compost doesn’t process any compostable products like cups, containers, utensils or plates. After going through “THOR,” those items are sorted out and sent to an incinerator. That includes things like the paper plates in the dining halls and containers for Neilson Cafe snacks.
The second and greater problem, however, isn’t anything with the process of anaerobic digestion itself, but the reason why we need to use it. To put it plainly, the problem is food waste, and while anaerobic digesters are a neat way to derive some benefits from the waste, they don’t do anything to address the larger issue of wasted food.
This was made clear from the tour of the depackaging facility. Walking from “THOR” to the huge white tanks filled with food slurry, there was an area called the loading dock. The loading dock had towers of stacked crates filled with unopened food. From sealed packs of mini yogurts to dusty bottles of wine to applesauce packets, the sheer quantity was staggering. As we rounded the corner to the food tanks, we were confronted by a wall — eight feet tall and at least twelve long — made up of hundreds of quarts of strawberries. These berries had been transported from California in a truck just one or two degrees higher than the allowed temperature. Because of this, they were not allowed to be sold in stores and had to be thrown away.
Take a moment to imagine that: the labor involved in growing the strawberries, the land and water and pesticides used, the resources and emissions required to create the plastic boxes, the fuel used to transport them across the entire United States. After we left, the berries were smashed by massive machines and used to collect energy.
This isn’t a one-off example. In the United States, 30-40% of the food supply is thrown away. Oftentimes, this waste is at the production or retail level, for example while processing or transporting the food to grocery stores, during faulty storage or as a result of over-ordering or overproduction. According to Feeding America, this is the equivalent of 145 billion meals — about 433 meals per person — wasted each year. Meanwhile, over 47 million people in the U.S. face hunger.
While colleges and other large institutions aren’t necessarily the main source of food waste, they do play a part in this issue, with twenty-two thousand pounds of food wasted annually on college campuses. At Smith, ten dining halls make it extremely difficult to correctly plan the amount of food to prepare. The college has discussed a consolidation effort that would limit the amount of excess food being produced on campus and, in doing so, reduce carbon emissions, energy usage and cost. Proposals such as closing existing and underutilised dining halls or building a centralized location for all services were discussed. However, further research on these advancements have not been made publicly available, and where these projects currently stand is unclear.
There are student-led efforts to salvage some of the food — namely the Food Rescue Network, an organization that collects excess food from dining services and donates it to Manna Community Kitchen. In addition, there’s been a push from EcoReps to bring back the Ozzi reusable container program, which would allow students to take their leftovers home to eat later, hopefully decreasing the amount of food students throw away. It would also reduce the amount of single-use products used — which, as previously mentioned, are not currently composted. But a failed attempt at reinstating Ozzis and lack of student cooperation in 2022 has left the administration questioning the worth of restarting the program.
Until there are updates on the progress of these projects, there are ways for the student body to reduce food waste. Whether it’s taking only as much food as they can eat, dining-in when possible or bringing reusable containers when taking food to-go, Smithies have the ability to make a difference on our campus. Most importantly, students should scan their OneCard so that each dining hall can plan and produce an appropriate amount of food. According to dining staff members Hilary Mikucki and Adam Dubois from Cutter-Ziskind, meal swipes help the dining teams determine the popularity of different meals and how much food they should prepare. They emphasized that this system doesn’t work well unless everyone participates in it.
Although these efforts won’t solve the country’s massive food waste problem, they can minimize Smith’s part in it. Additionally, by cultivating an awareness of our environmental impact and adopting sustainable habits at this point in our lives, Smithies can contribute to a broader cultural shift towards reducing food waste and embracing sustainability.
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