Composting, Hydroponics, and the Intern Experience: A Spotlight on Dining Sustainability
Dining Sustainability is part of the daily life of a William & Mary student. Whether it is through the use of compostable napkins, disposal of leftovers in the dish return, using the compost bins around campus, or simply walking by the hydroponics walls at the front of Commons Dining Hall, students are surrounded by environmentally friendly initiatives.
The compost program began exclusively in the dining halls, during food preparation and at the dish return station. In the fall of 2020, due to the pandemic and social distancing guidelines, the closed dining halls provided students with meals in compostable paper boxes. Students would then dispose of the boxes in trash bins, leaving them overflowing and calling attention to the necessity for public compost bins. At the beginning, there was only one bin, behind the Sadler Center.
“As that year went on, Student Assembly and the Dining Sustainability [interns] realized that there was a demand for more compost bins on campus,” said Sydney Thayer ‘24, a former Dining Sustainability intern and current Special Project Coordinator focusing on Sustainability. “The first set of public compost bins was bought by Student Assembly and there was one that I actually applied for through a Green Fee because I lived in Green and Gold Village and our one compost bin was always overflowing.”
Today there are 22 bins around campus, which can be easily located on an interactive map. Compost bins can be brought to one of three locations: Commons Dining Hall, Sadler Dining Hall, and Marketplace. At each of these is a loading dock where Dining Sustainability interns empty the compost bins. Once the compost is taken to the docks, NOPE Compost CO. picks it up and transports it to the McGill Regional Compost Facility in Waverly, VA.
Compost is made of both green compost, such as food scraps, bones, and peels, and brown compost, like leaves and sticks. “If it came from the ground at some point, we will take it,” Thayer explained. “You can compost pizza boxes, egg shells, meat, and dairy.” Our compost also accepts the bioplastic cutlery available at the dining halls, which are often made of sugar cane or potato starch. The amount of food waste we send to the compost facility gives the University compost credits each year that can be used to fertilize gardens around campus. In 2023, William & Mary composted 290,125 lbs of food waste, keeping 197,865 lbs of carbon dioxide from being released.
Dining Sustainability interns are the ones taking the compost bins from one location to another. These students are in charge of the transportation and delivery of compost and the hydroponics at Commons Dining Hall. Where there were only a few bins around campus, the interns would simply take them from their stations to the nearest dining hall by foot. But with the growing interest and demand in the program, more bins were placed, making their transportation more difficult.
In 2022, former interns Thayer, Dorian Miller ‘22, Grace Philips ‘23 and Claire Wille ‘22 applied for and were awarded a Green Fee for a Campus Public Compost Transportation and Expansion project that funded the purchase of an electric golf cart. This golf cart was key for expanding the compost program, as that meant that the scope of the program could be much larger. Now it spans from the Law School and the Graduate Complex, to the School of Education, Ludwell Hall, and Richmond Hall. Each Dining Sustainability Intern drives the golf cart once a week to pick up compost bins, attach them to a hitch on the back of the cart, and take them back to the dining halls.
Thanks to the golf cart, Dining Sustainability launched a new initiative in the spring 2024 semester where students off-campus can sign up for their compost to get picked up by the golf carts, which has made composting more accessible for all students. Dining Sustainability provides off-campus residents with a bucket for them to put compost out and get picked up every Sunday.
Another highlight of the Dining Sustainability program and internship is the hydroponics system. The unmissable wall at Commons is student run. Interns set seeds on trays that sit over water. Through pipes, the interns send nutrients depending on what the seeds need to grow. To showcase the system, instead of the harvested produce going into the salad bar, interns put them in compostable containers across from the wall for students to take fresh vegetables for free.
Anyone holding an event on campus can also request a compost bin. Seneca RiceWoolf ‘25, a head intern for Dining Sustainability, shared how exciting this offering is. “I was just trying to reserve the Crim Dell Meadow recently and they approved my reservation, and when I was scrolling down … and it said ‘do you want a compost bin?’ and it linked to us,” RiceWoolf said.
This event RiceWoolf was referring to is Farm Fest, a project she pitched to Dining Sustainability. Aramark works with 4P Foods, a company that sources the university’s grocery needs from small, local farms. RiceWoolf wants to showcase the way the dining halls receive foods grown and distributed sustainably to the greater student community. “I just got really locked in on the idea of a farm-to-table festival and [Aramark] was really supportive and willing to fund it and help organize that.” The event will be held on November 8th in the Crim Dell Meadow.
Interns work on other outreach projects, such as supporting a sustainability club at Waller Mill Elementary School for grades 3 to 5. Education is a hallmark of the Dining Sustainability and internship program. For example, they partner with organizations around campus, such as a campus clean-up with the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Thayer shared how this educational aspect is valuable for both the community and the intern. “It’s a very practical, hands-on application of sustainability, combined with the very theoretical, outreach education side of sustainability,” Thayer said.
Through the internship, students can focus on an area of sustainability they are interested in, even if they are not studying Environment and Sustainability. “A lot of this is passion projects,” Aayla Kastning ‘26, a head intern, said about non-ENSP majors. “It really is depending on an intern’s interest,” RiceWoolf said, explaining the flexibility in the internship program. “They pick and choose what they really want to focus on.”
The Dining Sustainability program allows all students to be part of helping the environment prosper, and since the internship lets students get personally involved, it’s a rewarding experience. “Compost does get a lot of interest and it’s cool, and honestly a really nice job to do,” Kastning said. “We care about compost and helping people.”
