Haverford College is leading the way into a sustainable future with three new green accomplishments this year: receiving a Level III Arboretum Certification, adding reusable containers in the Dining Center, and purchasing a biodigester.
Students and neighbors visit Haverford College’s Arboretum trails. (Photo credit: Patrick Montero)
A Leafy Refuge
Haverford College is already well known for its sprawling 216-acre campus and its beautiful nature trail. Local dog walkers, runners, and bird watchers regularly visit the campus to get their fix of the outdoors. Earlier this year Haverford College was able to take their status as a “leafy refuge” by becoming certified as a Level III Arboretum. For more accreditation information, see this link.
To achieve the level III certification, Arboretum Program Coordinator Jennie Ciborowski noted that Arboretum staff implemented changes to expand their arboretum educational programming and use the arboretum for college research. According to Ciborowski, “With the help of Haverford students, local schools and other community members we were able to plant over 360 trees in the past year.”
Next steps for staff is discovering the ways that college classes are using the campus Arboretum. “Currently, we know of 15 classes that use the Arboretum for learning purposes,” Ciborowski stated. “But we want to find out how we can increase that number and ways that we can help professors use the arboretum as an educational tool.”
Accessibility to a well-maintained arboretum is good news for the college and local community. Studies show that spending as little as 15 minutes in nature walking among trees improves a person’s mood, increases concentration, and provides a myriad of health benefits.
Ozzi Containers to the Rescue
In addition to a verdant campus, Haverford’s Dining Center is also “green.” The college recently introduced reusable take-out containers (to replace compostable ones) and a new biodigester to break down food waste.
To better understand the sustainable efforts on campus, we met with Jesse H. Lytle, Haverford’s Vice President and Chief of Staff and the college’s first Chief Sustainability Officer. Lytle explained that the Dining Center’s single-use disposable take out containers were recently replaced by reusable plastic Ozzi containers. Lytle estimated that approximately 300 single-use disposable containers were used daily and that a large portion of take-out food was thrown out.
Now students return the reusable containers to the Dining Center to be washed. “Instead of using hundreds of single-use containers a day, the students are using about 60 reusable containers a day,” Lytle noted. “This change allowed us to keep single-use containers out of the landfill.” He added, “Students are much more mindful about how much food they are taking out of the Dining Center.”
New reusable Ozzi take out containers at the Dining Center. Students sign out one take-out container at a time in order to reduce food waste.
With its reusable containers, Haverford has reduced its food waste and eliminated the expense and landfill waste associated with disposable containers.
Meet “Munchy Crunchy”
This year, Haverford also tackled food waste by adding its newest member of the community: an aerobic food digester (or biodigester) aptly named by students “Munchy Crunchy, Grinds Up Your Lunchy.” Munchy Crunchy’s job grinds up kitchen scraps and leftover food from the Dining Center, and turns it into gray water with the help of microorganisms.
Munchy Crunchy, Grinds Up Your Lunchy, complete with googly eyes. To add new food scraps, simply lift the lid and pour them in.
The addition of Munchy Crunchy to Haverford’s Dining Center has led to some changes in the way students and staff dispose of their waste. A conveyor belt collects dirty dishes; students throw away napkins, tea bags, plastic products, coffee stirrers, and other non-compostable waste in a trash bin and leave remaining food scraps on their dishes. The kitchen staff sorts food scraps and removes anything else that cannot go in the digester, such as bones and fat trimmings. This unwanted food waste goes into landfill. The digester “consumes” meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, breads, dairy, pasta, and egg shells.
The Dining Center conveyer belt where students put compostable food scraps on their dirty dishes to be sorted by the kitchen staff. Students can throw away non-compostable waste in the black trash bins.
Once food is added to the digester, sharp blades grind up food and water is added to produce gray water, or nutrient-rich sludge. This gray water is drained from the digester and flows through the sewer system to Philadelphia’s wastewater treatment plant, which further harvests biogases through anaerobic digestion. Essentially, Crunchy Munchy is a giant garbage disposal with googly eyes, but its job is important in Haverford’s goal of keeping trucks off the road and waste out of landfills.
From its outdoor leafy campus to its indoor Dining Hall improvements, Haverford College continues to strive to make the campus environmentally sustainable.
By Allison Day and Shannon Ruane, interns at Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants. Allison Day is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies. Shannon Ruane is currently receiving her Master of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.
