Not a scrap wasted

Food service at Cornell has gotten a little greener with a new program to turn food waste from Bon Appétit, the college’s dining service provider, into compost.

This fall, Bon Appétit contracted with GreenRU, a Des Moines, Iowa, company that works to divert food waste from landfills. More than half of the waste that goes to landfills is organic material, and in the case of food waste, composting is the only way to recycle it. GreenRU picks up a bin of food waste weekly from Bon Appétit and takes it to Linn County’s Solid Waste Agency, which in turn makes the waste into compost. That compost is then available for sale to farmers, and Linn County residents can get up to one ton of compost for free per visit.