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What started as a vision to several Illinois State University faculty members is about to become reality. By sometime this fall, mature cattle at the ISU Farm should be devouring a delicacy composed of ISU dining center scraps and newsprint. The plan is a five-year demonstration project funded by various public and private sources.
Sounds repulsive? Rumor has it the cows think it’s delicious.
The individuals responsible for devising this ingenious plan all played equal and important roles in its development. Paul Walker, ISU professor of agriculture, will direct the program. Floyd Hoelting, director of ISU’s Office of Residential Life (ORL), Dick Hennessey, director of Residence Hall Food Service and Jan Freehill, assistant director of special projects at ORL, all helped get the project underway.
Hoelting says it all began during a “brainstorming” session two years ago. They talked about the potential of a food-waste recycling program. After hearing about programs in place at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Freehill, Hennessey, and Hoelting took a trip there to examine all phases of their recycling programs.
From a plastics recycling factory to residence hall recyclable collection, Rutgers has every aspect, Hoelting says. The three “examined every part of their recycling program, from how they implement it to how they promote it,” he says. They also noted food waste and newsprint being fed to cattle at a nearby farm. It was done merely to get rid of the waste, not as a formal experiment or process. As Hoelting was boarding the plane to return to Illinois, it dawned on him: “Hey, we can do this at ISU!”
Upon their return, they started to put the program together and applied for funding from the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources (ENR). ENR was willing to back the project because of its enormous implications to the food service industry. The announcement that funding was granted came at a press conference in early February.
Walker describes the technical aspects of the process, which require that the food waste and newsprint be “pulped” and “ensiled” before the mixture is fed to cattle.
“One of the great things about this project is that existing technology is being utilized,” he says. “In the east, institutions are charged by the yard for garbage they dump, so they use pulping machines to reduce the size of the waste that must be discarded.”
Waste pulping machines use whirling blades to pulverize food and paper waste into a semi-dry pulp, eliminating about 85 percent of the space it would have taken up in its original state. After the waste is pulped, newsprint may be added to comprise up to 25 percent of its total. Traditional feed ingredients, such as corn or urea, will be added to increase the crude protein equivalency of the mixture. The product will then be placed in silos to ferment for about four weeks. This ensiling process is necessary “to kill all harmful bacteria and to produce a product that smells and tastes like regular silage, so it is acceptable to the cattle.,” Walker explains. One disadvantage of this product is that it has a fairly low nutritional content, so it can only make up 30 to 50 percent of the cattle’s diet, he adds. The “food wasteliage” as Walker calls the finished product, will only be fed to older breeder cattle because they have a lower energy requirement.
“Energy cannot be lost, only converted to a different form, and this program is just like that,” Walker says proudly. In the future, beef cattle fed food wasteliage may be deemed safe to be consumed at the dinner table. “We are taking a product that was previously discarded and feeding it to cattle to make a product perfectly fit for human consumption,” Walker says.
Hennessey points out that although ISU generates one and one-half tons of food waste each day, this is not entirely food that has been wasted by students.
“A lot of it is the trimmings and by-products that could not be used during preparation in the kitchen,” he says. “If all the waste were divided among all students, each would contribute about the weight of a small apple.”
The five-year experimental program will cost $287,000, with $185,000 being contributed by ENR. The agency gave $50,000 to kick off ISU’s recycling program in May 1991. Coca-Cola also donated $50,000 in the form of bins for dropping off recyclables. Mike Collins, manager of ENR’s Office of Recycling and Waste Reduction, says “ENR is funding several food waste demonstration projects to determine if we can recycle this organic portion of our garbage.”
Hoelting says the $185,000 pledged by ENR has been nearly matched by other donors, including Hobart Corp. of Troy, Ohio, which will donate one $23,000 waste pulper machine for the project. Three more will be purchased for the remaining dining centers to be used in the project. As part of the arrangement with ENR, ISU will train other state institutions on the recycling program.
Hennessey indicates officials from Brigham Young University have contacted ISU in hopes of developing a similar food waste program. “Frankly, this project has worldwide potential,” he says.
The proponents of this project say it provides other beneficial results in addition to the obvious.
“It’s a win-win-win situation,” Hoelting says. “We’re saving valuable space in our landfills, we’re on the cutting edge of recycling technology today, and we’re teaching students valuable lessons about recycling. It is important to keep as much waste as possible out of the landfills, but it is almost of a greater value to teach the lessons we’re teaching to the students.”
Walker says this experiment fulfills three of ISU’s fundamental missions: teachning, research and service.
It educates the students and community about this process. We’re researching its effect on the environment, and it’s a service because we’re going to have a demonstration project for the entire state.” Through this program, ISU, McLean County, and the State of Illinois all benefit in their own way, Walker adds.
All of those involved in the project believe it will help bolster Illinois State’s image as a quality institution. Walker says “research and teaching is more unique at ISU than at other institutions; it’s very hard to separate them. ISU does a lot of applied research that has practical benefit.”
Hoelting and Freehill give accolades to the companies that supervise ISU’s recycling program, the student workers they employ, and those who contribute to the program by recycling.
“Both of our contractors, Morris Tick Company and Midwest Paper Stock, have really been teammates with us in getting this thing started,” Hoelting says.
Freehill compliments both ORL student workers and residents of the dorms. “When we first began the program, cardboard pizza boxes were usually covered with pizza (they are not recyclable in this condition), but the students have gotten much better over the last year.”
The food waste recycling program is set to begin in August. Construction required to install the pulping machines will begin over the summer so the project should begin when the students return in the fall.
Hennessey says the pulping machine installation will also help his kitchens in other ways. “They should make the dishrooms more efficient, and we may be able to operate with less staff in the slower periods.”
If there is enough time during the summer, “trial runs” of the experiment may occur.
According to Hoelting, this project is just another plateau in the recycling program at ISU, which started out with aluminum cans only, and now includes newsprint, cardboard, and steel cans. “It seems Jan Freehill (she is in charge of the ORL recycling program) adds another program every year,” he says.
But the real orchestrators of environmental awareness at ISU are the students, the officials say.
“These programs were started at the insistence of the students, and they want to be involved in every part of them,” Hoelting says.
This is encouraging, for when it is time to educate the next generation of college students, there may be no other disposal alternative.