This past spring Goodnight Hall launched a successful composting program with our partners at the UW–Madison Office of Sustainability Green Office Program. Throughout the summer, occupants at Goodnight Hall were able to divert 1-2 buckets of food waste a week from the trash and into the composting program. We anticipated this would drastically increase as more faculty, staff, and students returned to the building this fall. As the program was preparing to deploy additional composting buckets to meet the upcoming need, campus notified building occupants that the programs for Goodnight Hall and at the majority of other campus locations had been suspended.
On July 30th, 2021, UW–Madison was forced to suspend collection of food waste (commonly referred to as “compost”) generated on campus. Previously, campus employees collected food waste in a variety of locations on campus, such as buckets, carts, and in dining facilities. The organic material was hauled away to an anaerobic digester. The operator of the digester, Clean Fuel Partners LLC, notified UW–Madison that it would no longer accept food waste. Please see the article included below for more information. If you’d like to leave feedback for campus leadership, please use the survey link below.
Article
Survey
https://uwmadison.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3L8FFvchQBliuZE
Exceptions
The only exceptions are the five locations below. For the short-term (and hopefully the long-term), the food waste collection process will remain the same at these locations. Currently, campus is exploring internal processing capabilities.
- Gordon Dining and Events Center
- Dejope Residence Hall (Four Lakes Market)
- Memorial Union
- Union South
- University Hospital
Future of the Food Waste Collection Program
The Office of Sustainability and the FP&M – Physical Plant – Waste & Recycling Team will continue to search for outlets work with a variety of stakeholders to divert more food waste from the landfill.