My high school’s Green Campus Initiative recently added an impressive piece of hardware. The Lawrenceville School’s sustainability program includes a LEED certified building, biodiesel production facilities and vehicles, and an organic vegetable garden that helps to feed the campus. In January, the school purchased something called an in-vessel digester, a food waste mixer that turns food waste into mulch. The alumni newsletter recently highlighted the digester purchase, and the ambitious plans that accompany it.

One of the school’s goals is to produce zero dining hall waste. Apparently, an average lunch during the school year (consumed by hundreds of students, faculty and staff), produces over 260 pounds of food scraps. The digester also gladly accepts cardboard, which not only reduces campus waste, but regulates the moisture so that the digester can create mulch.

The digester system transforms all sorts of food waste, including chicken bones, to mulch in just 3-4 days. The mulch is subsequently used on the school’s organic garden, as well as for landscaping needs throughout the campus. 

As a side note, the same alumni newsletter, in an article highlighting alums in interesting or non-traditional careers, features two brothers who work for our longtime wind energy customer, the storied Brooklyn Brewery.