Rotten meat is soil’s tasty treat

Josiah Garber

Braving the frigid winter air and snow, Cheryl Heatwole (left) and Emily Benner take a bucket of food scraps to the compost pile. The soil friendly task is one that takes the daily committment of involved students.

The trek from the cafeteria to the compost heap can be a bit treacherous-with a golf cart that operates in spurts of aggressive acceleration and stalls at inopportune times-but the composters, Cheryl Heatwole and Emily Benner, make it there every day just the same.

Equipped with a pitchfork, a pair of rubberized work gloves, and sometimes a guest, the girls haul buckets overflowing with melon rinds, scrambled eggs, and too-tempting pizza to the dumping grounds behind the Science Center. Spectators from the science lab bang on the windows and wave, and the composting begins.

As soon as the pitchforker has dug the first trench, the dumper hurls a bucket-load of multi-colored food material into the hole. The workers dodge the splattering of fermenting juices, but in an attempt to beat their record time, they are willing to abandon all cleanliness. Moving from trench to trench, the girls work down the line until all four to eight buckets are empty.

It's a good thing the compost heap is downhill from the cafeteria, since the golf cart struggles going uphill when it isn't weighed down by 100 pounds of food matter. Although the return trip is slow, it can be a bumpy ride. Philip Shirk, a guest on a recent composting run, recalls his experience. "After we dumped out the compost into the rows, I put the empty buckets back onto the golf cart, but I just set the lids on top of the buckets. Then in the short distance between the science center and the maintenance building, we ended up losing all the bucket lids." Upon returning to the Physical Plant, the composters realized the lids were strewn all along the path back to the compost pile. Now they are sure to secure the lids before returning.

Back at the Physical Plant, the girls check to see if the outdoor hose is frozen. If so, they will get to thaw out their hands while they rinse the buckets under the warm water in the shop. Otherwise they will battle the unruly outdoor hose and walk home with wet pants and shoes.

The recent snow has complicated the composting process. Since the golf cart is not a snow-fairing vehicle, the composters leave it in the plowed parking lot beside the science center and half-run, half-slide down the embankment, oddly off-balance with their front-heavy loads. (Trying to maneuver buckets without handles proves especially amusing to the onlookers in science lab.)

Composting requires a lot of work, considering it only saves EMU $50 in dumping fees per month, but the environmental benefits are well worth the time and effort, according to the composters. Besides which, it can be a lot of fun. As composter Rachel Sims said, "It's really pretty humorous in general to see us out composting in our everyday clothes-Cheryl in her boots with heels and me in khakis today."

Despite the benefits of composting, the project has faced some resistance since its beginning just after Christmas break. Composting guest Tim Shenk said that "Supposedly the buckets of discarded food were posing a "tripping hazard" for the cafeteria staff, which shows the amount of discarded food."

The cafeteria staff clearly stated that they wanted to help the composting project to continue, but if the buckets remained "tripping hazards," some adjustments would need to be made.

The future of the composting project is unclear but hopeful. Sims is concerned that "we seem to be running out of compostable area," and Shenk expresses his anxiety over a lack of worms: "We were told that our compost piles should be full of worms, which we haven't noticed yet. Maybe the worms are smart enough to know the deadliness of our pitchfork." Both composters are optimistic about finding resolutions to these obstacles. In the mean time, the composting crew-Rachel Sims, Cheryl Heatwole, and Emily Benner-will continue to serve the EMU community in their efforts.