This week is the 4th annual Illinois soil health week. The week is meant to promote healthy soil practices and advocate for protection of soil and water quality.
The composting facility for the sustainable farms at SIU won an award for their work.
Rachel Miller is the director of the SIU sustainable farms. One of her responsibilities is to run the university’s forced air composting facility. They recently earned an award from the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition. She’s using today's award reception as a teaching opportunity, "We're here to inspire, to educate, and tell people what goes into composting so they can do it at home."
Miller led visitors on a tour of the farm that has been composting since 2014.
Here’s how their system works — Food and organic scraps from SIU dining halls and other on campus entities arrives at the facility. From there the waste is placed into large concrete storage bins. Workers monitor the moisture and temperature of the compost for the next 4 to 6 months. Moisture is added as needed and air is forced through the materials to aid in the composting.
Miller says their system is unique because the compost they create ends up helping the students supplying the scraps, "We add the compost to the soils to feed our fruits and vegetables that we then sell back to the dining halls to feed to students. We also feed students through our farmer's market for students to purchase directly if they don't have access to a dining hall."
Amy Bartucci is the administrator of the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition. She’s also on the board of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance.
She says shes here to highlight how the work at SIU aligns with the organizations' composting and soil health goals for everyone in the state, "What SIU is saying here is we can have a collaboration on our own campus. Students, staff, dining hall, and food service working together to reduce the contamination to get that valuable feedstock into the soil to feed their own community."
Miller says the SIU program proves sustainability is achievable when everyone works together, "It's been a big task of mine to try to showcase the efforts of not just our facility, but the facilities of the dining hall, housing, sustainability center, as well as our physical plant or facilities and energy management. The work and effort that they put into this makes something great for students to utilize, as well as reduce waste in our general campus systems."
If you want to learn how to start your own composting or find resources to help your efforts, check out the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition.
