Cafeteria compost

University of Iowa engineering student Holly Moriarty spent a semester wiping counters and sorting silverware at a dining hall on campus.

As closing time approached during each shift, she'd watch as massive pans of uneaten food went down the disposal or into the dumpster. The sight was, in a word, depressing.

So she decided to do something about it.

In the spring 2006 semester, she and three classmates penned "The UI Compost Project," a document detailing the benefits of composting pre-consumer food waste at the Hillcrest Market Place.

What started as a class assignment led to roughly 17.36 tons of food waste diverted from the Hillcrest kitchen for composting in the spring 2007 semester.

That's more than 34,000 pounds of browning lettuce, stale pizza and hardened casserole. The program continues, with the average of just under a ton of pre-consumer waste composted each week.

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Moriarty earned a civil engineering degree from the UI in May and is working for an environmental engineering consulting firm in Oak Brook, Ill.

Contact: Fred Kurt,
Hillcrest Market Place,
319-335-9368,
fred-kurt@uiowa.edu.