Tufts Recycles! - Composting at Tufts

Food Waste

During the academic year, the Medford campus composts about 0.5 tons of food waste each day:

FY01	FY02	FY03	FY04	FY05	FY06	FY06
106.2 tons	82.1 tons	97.35 tons	147.7 tons	156 tons	170.6 tons	181 tons

The composting program has allowed Dining Services to reduce its yearly solid food and non-food waste sent to the dumpsite by 62%. Dining Service employees in Carmichael Dining Hall, Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall and in the university's Central Production Facility place food scraps and organic materials into non-trash bins.

Food waste from Tufts is picked up from two haulers. Save That Stuff collects from Carmichael Dining Hall and takes the material to Rocky Hill Farm in Saugus MA. Thompson Disposal picks up material from Dewick Mac-Phie and takes it to DEP-permitted compost facilities in Massachusetts and it can travel all the way to Maine. Our food waste is combined with leaves and other organic materials to generate nutrient-rich compost for farmers and landscapers.

Keeping organic materials out of Massachusetts' already crowded landfills not only saves landfill space but also cuts the generation of methane-a powerful greenhouse gas created from organic materials' anaerobic decomposition.

Tufts students have found that compared to the amount of methane prevented by composting, the carbon emissions from the Thompson Disposal hauling truck are negligible.

For more information about composting, the world's oldest recycling system, please visit www.vegweb.com/composting.

Tufts Dining separates food scraps during meal preparation.

The food Tufts students leave on their trays is emptied into the "river" by dishroom staff.

Food scraps are then "pulped" to extract water. The finished scraps appears like a hummus.

Yard Waste

The Medford Campus also composts all its yard waste. LandscapeXpress, a local company, picks up leaves and other yard waste. The yard waste numbers are converted from cubic yard to tons.

FY 01	FY 02	FY 03	FY 04	FY 05	FY 06	FY 07
N/A	425 tons	430 tons	502 tons	437 tons	510 tons	tons

Yard waste is measured in cubic yards, not in tons. The conversion we used is 500 lbs per cubic yard. Tufts has four lawn mowers which chop the grass making our yard waste very dense. Industry average weight per cubic yard ranges from 350-500 per pound.

Grafton composts all its manure, bedding and yard waste on site. The compost is used as fertilizer on the fields in Grafton.

For more info on recycling statistics click here!