Ohio University composts nearly 100% of campus food waste
ATHENS, Ohio (WCMH) — One Ohio college is working toward being as sustainable as possible and a big part of that is composting uneaten food.
Colleges like Ohio University have a lot of food waste left over from the kitchen and dining halls. Ohio University has figured out how to compost 100 percent of that food waste.
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With around 20,000 students at the school, it's no wonder there is some food waste. But for students in the dining halls, the university has made it easy. Students just put their uneaten food on a conveyor belt.
'There are student workers there who will scrape that food waste into one of these large green bins,' Ohio University Director of Sustainability Sam Crowl said. 'Those bins are then stored at that dining hall for the day. They'll bring them up here and then they'll add them with wood chips into the compost facility to start the decomposition process.'
Ohio University's facility is the largest in-vessel composting system at any college in the country, processing more than five tons of food waste each day.
Athens Mayor Steve Patterson said sustainability is huge for the school and for the city.
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'It's in our DNA, it's in the university's DNA to constantly be very environmentally conscious about the things that we are doing,' Patterson said. 'The composting program is a big piece of that.'
Crowl said all of the food waste that goes through the compost facility is turned into nutrient-dense soil, which then goes back to the university.
'They'll pick it up on a daily basis, especially now in the spring and the summer,' Crowl said. 'They'll take it down to campus and spread it around all our trees and all our flower beds on our intramural fields and anywhere that that nutrient-rich soil can do good.'
Crowl said the compost system is not just about helping the planet; it's also about being economically responsible.
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'All of the electricity savings we're doing up here, all of the savings of not having to ship this to the landfill, that's part of the equation, and certainly we're helping people and certainly we're helping the environment,' he said.
On top of composting all the food, Ohio University's facility is completely sustainable, getting most electricity from solar panels and using a waste oil burner to heat the place in the winter.
To learn more about how Ohio University's system works, click here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Through a translation app, the man warns us not to touch anything — some might still be live. Upstairs, a single wooden desk and chair have been placed near a panoramic window facing the airstrip. I sit down, imagining General Vang Pao and CIA officers in this very spot, directing B-52 bombing runs on communist strongholds. The war — so vast, so devastating — had largely been coordinated from this small, simple room. It was almost impossible to reconcile the scale of the conflict with the modesty of this setting. We climb up to the roof. From there, the view stretches across the old airstrip and into the mountains that once shielded Long Tieng from attack. Today, the village is quiet. A few people walk slowly down the main road. Stray dogs nap in the sun. It's hard to believe that tens of thousands of people once lived here. Today, the impacts of the intense US bombing campaign on Laos are still being felt. 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