This past summer, Aramark dining services and Dining Hall management attended a three and a half hour workshop at the Furman Farm to learn about how to improve the university’s food waste composting system.

Although the DH has been providing the farm with food scraps, or post-consumer waste, for three years, challenges still remained, particularly in the form of plastic straws and syrup cups that could contaminate otherwise healthy batches of compost.

But now, plastic in the compost mix should no longer be an issue since the DH switched several plastic products to the compostable alternatives following the summer workshop. The switch eliminates “97-98 percent of non-compostable items from the mix,” according to Bruce Adams, Organic and Compost Farm Manager.

With this improvement, Adams estimates that the farm will need to do very little sorting to prepare the DH food scraps for the composting process.

Composting can only be done correctly with biodegradable materials such as food waste, lawn waste (like leaves or grass clippings), and some paper products (like newspaper and napkins). If plastic is added to the mix, it can contaminate the whole system.

 Adams operates three industrial-size composting sites in addition to a “community composting” site at the farm where students can contribute personal food scraps from a residence hall level. Currently, almost all of Furman’s food waste is inserted into the composting system.

“We can expect by the end of the academic year that we would produce somewhere between 25 and 28 tons of compost,” Adams said, noting the increased load from the DH’s contaminant-free food waste.

An industrial-grade composting and digesting machine is expected to arrive next month to help handle the increased load.

What started out as an aspiration at the Furman Farm’s birth in 2008 has evolved into a business. Due to the increased load from the DH, Adams is looking into selling the premium compost he produces and is working with a marketing team to create a product label.

Throughout Furman’s sustainability initiatives over the years, Adams said he has continually emphasized that the improvements in composting in the DH and at the farm have been a team effort.

“You won’t have one success without the other,” he said. “You need both [Furman management and Aramark services] to make this a fully successful program.”