“Just one campus”: RIT’s Impact on Climate Change

The campus of Rochester Institute of Technology, located in New York state’s third largest city, covers 1,300 acres and boasts a “Brick City” constructed from 15.7 million bricks. Home to 19,047 students and 4,100 faculty and staff, RIT has a contributing factor of 92,588 pounds of waste daily based on a recent study suggesting that an individual generates four pounds (nearly the weight of a brick) of waste every day. So, how big is our campus’ carbon footprint?

At RIT, students have been concerned about the composting, potentially lack thereof, in dining locations on campus.

Garbage outside in Henrietta. Photo by Brinna Dochniak.

Ryan Tandy, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at RIT, said: “I think a lot of people don’t think that they can make a difference, but if you can keep 100–200 pounds of garbage out of a landfill in a year and continue that throughout your lifetime that’s a huge impact. That’s the way I like to think.”​

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “The United States generates more than 34 million tons of food waste each year. Less than three percent of the 34 million tons of food waste generated in 2010 was recovered and recycled. The rest — 33 million tons — was thrown away.”

Gabrielle Harrington, RIT catering event supervisor, confirmed that RIT does compost but it may not always be done perfectly.

All composting done at RIT is through Natural Upcycle, which is upstate New York’s top food scraps and organics collection company. Their focus is to collect organic or food waste and turn it into a renewable resource — such as electricity or natural gas — through a process called anaerobic digestion.

Dr. Thomas Trabold, head of RIT’s sustainability department said: “When you compost it is anaerobic digestion which makes CO2 instead of methane gas. CO2 in that form is okay because it is what we call biogenic CO2, it’s part of the natural carbon cycle. It came from plant material and now is just going back into the atmosphere.”

In this video, learn more about RIT department of sustainabilities research.

Last year, RIT Dining Services collected approximately 36 tons of pre-consumer organic compost material that they then gave to a local farm.

​With Gracie’s being the biggest kitchen in Monroe County, negligence and ignorance cannot be excuses for not composting correctly.

Gracie’s has the ability to capture both pre-and post-consumer materials. Other food locations like Brick City, Commons, SAU, and RITZ have the ability to capture pre-consumer materials. That being the case, those locations only capture about half of the compost per meal that Gracie’s does. Smaller locations on campus like Crossroads, Salsarita’s Cantina, and Freshens do not capture any compost materials.

Problems that have been occurring in some dining locations at RIT have made using Natural Upcycle more difficult. “The green compost bins have been eliminated from the kitchens on campus because of bugs. Now that they compost bins are located in the hallway they are not being used as much,” said Harrington.

​University of Rochester runs into similar issues that RIT has with composting. Cam Schauf, director of Campus Dining Services at University of Rochester said:

“We do pre-consumer composting in all of our food preparation areas and kitchens. Our employee’s separate food scraps during preparation and service, weigh them and put them in our compost bins. We also do post-consumer composting in our dish room in Danforth (a residential dining center). All napkins, food scraps and compostable food containers that come into the dish room go into a pulper and the pulp is picked up by Waste Management. In our other residential dining center, Douglass, our napkins and food scraps go into a bio-digester. We also compost all of our coffee grounds for all of our cafés. We collect leftovers to be sent to area soup kitchens.”

Enid Cardinal, senior sustainability advisor in the Office of the President at RIT discussed some testing being done on campus. “We are testing food dehydration from Crossroads with only pre-consumer materials. There is also a pre-dehydrator located outside of Gracie’s that is being tested.”

For post-consumer foods and materials that cannot be composted, programs like Recover Rochester and RIT Food Share come into play.

Recover Rochester is a program that takes the food that is left over from events on campus and repurposes the food to other students or people who may need it. Recover Rochester was started in December of 2012 by RIT students. This group has dedicated their resources to help feed the hungry people of Rochester by taking leftover food from campus. Currently Recover Rochester is gathering food from Commons, Gracie’s, Brick City, and Crossroads.

Sam Herrick, RIT events supervisor, explained that because of the Monroe County health rules not all food can be served or taken off site after an event is over: “I can only inform people of the health code rules, I can’t enforce them.” The issue with that being if someone does get sick from food at a RIT event that is consumed after the event has ended, RIT is still held responsible, even if the person was informed of the health codes.

RIT Dining has been trying to find creative ways to save and reuse food. For foods that are nonperishable, they are brought to RIT Food Share. Their central location on campus is in the Riverknoll apartment complex. There has also been a garden established by RIT Food Share and will also hold food drives on campus. There is also a Facebook group that students can join to be updated on where there may be free food available on campus.

The most effective solution to food waste at RIT events is preplanning. Forecasting and having a backup plan is very important for any event that could be held outside. “A few years ago, unfortunately, we had an incident where we were supposed to serve 1500 people outside under a tent for orientation week. Thunder and lightning started rolling in and we weren’t allowed to serve anyone outside under the tent, so we had to compost all of that food. It was 1500 portions worth of chicken that we had to get rid of,” explained Harrick.

If an event is planned well then there should not be much food waste at all by the end. Events that involve students also have much less food waste because students are always looking for free food options on campus and will take plenty.

Cardinal hopes that someday there will be on-site composting operations on RIT’s campus. One of the reasons places like CrossRoads and Salsarita’s do not compost is because the Natural Upcycle trucks simply do not fit down the roads to successfully pick up their compost bins from those locations.

There are 20 composting bins outside of the SAU. They have to be outside because of health code; if the boxes stay indoors the decaying food is unsanitary and attracts bugs. Once the composts bins are full then all food waste must go into the garbage until the bins are picked up and emptied.

“The main thing is we have to start looking at waste as a resource instead of this burdensome thing that you have to get rid of somehow. The reality is that food waste, or any organic waste, ends up in a landfill — that’s a big problem. The main reason is that in a landfill it creates methane gas which has a very large global warming potential so even a small leak of methane has a big impact on the environment. So, the main thing first and foremost is to keep all organic material out of the landfills,” said Trabold.

Composting is one way for RIT to do its part in the fight against climate change and students can combat climate change on campus in other ways as well.

Stella Haberman, a second-year political science student at RIT said: “I wish there were more recycling bins outside on campus. There are recycling options in buildings, but I find that outside when I am walking to my classes I can’t always find a recycling bin or even a garbage can for that matter.”

Reducing the amount of transportation, being reasonable about heating and cooling your home, and separating waste and recycling correctly are just a few ways that RIT students can make a difference to help the earth.

Garbage on RIT campus. Photo by Brinna Dochniak.

“I just recycle, I like recycling. I also try and be super conscious of my water and electricity consumption. I attempt to get my roommates on board and it’s tough because I don’t think they really think like me sometimes. I don’t like wasting and throwing things away. I would like to think I’m a super conscious consumer,” said RIT student Ryan Tandy.

RIT may seem like just one campus, a small community of 20,447 people in a world populated by 7.5 billion people, but the reality is we all need to do our part. Simple acts like recycling and being a conscious consumer may seem minuscule, but if everyone in the world thinks that way then nothing will change.