By Courtney Voisard
Traditions is the name of three all-you-care-to-eat cafeterias located across campus at the Ohio State University. Traditions at Kennedy, Morrill, and Scott are responsible for feeding the nearly 40,000 students residing on campus while working to leave the smallest environmental footprint possible.
Meals at Traditions are included in three-out-of-four university meal plans and includes a wide array of food options. With so many students eating at Traditions every day, these large cafeterias are working to achieve the most environmentally friendly means of waste management.
“We have been pretty aggressive at trying different technologies.” Brian Roe, director of the Ohio State Food Waste Collaborative said of Traditions across campus that each use different methods of waste management. “Scott has EnviroPure, Kennedy uses a pulper and Morrill does not have any technology at this time but they are exploring new options.”
According to University Dining Services, the compact pulper that operates in the dish room of Kennedy takes organic material filtered through water to an extractor that lifts the waste from the water. The water is contained to be used again and again, but the pulp from Kennedy is picked up and taken to Qasar Energy Group which ultimately converts the pulp into biogas that can be used to generate electricity.
OSU has installed two EnviroPure Bio-digester waste systems in their newest and largest Traditions location: Traditions at Scott. This waste system is a self-contained, continual-feed, food disposal system designed to convert food waste into water through a special process, according to University Dining Services.
Food waste first travels from the dishes to a trough where a closed system of water moves it to an extractor. The extractor then dumps the waste into a grinder that fills a digester tank. The mass in the tank digests and transforms into greywater that is disposed into the water system.
Traditions across campus have adopted these waste management methods to reduce the amount of waste they accumulate while still feeding many hungry students around campus.
