Colleges Try Composting Waste to Lower Carbon Footprints. By Kim Martineau, Hartford Courant, May 24, 2008. "As environmental activism grows on college campuses, institutions are working to reduce their carbon footprints. Landfills, where most garbage ends up, release carbon dioxide and methane gas as waste decomposes. That goal has sent schools digging deep into their dumpsters. Yale estimates that as much as 40 percent of its trash is organic. By composting those peels and rinds, instead of burning them or burying them, Yale hopes to cut greenhouse emissions, meet new sewer requirements and possibly save some money. Composting has already taken hold at Wesleyan University and Connecticut College, where students have designed a system for collecting food scraps in their dining halls. The waste is poured into giant bins, where it's mixed with leaves and turned, over several weeks, to add oxygen. At the end of the composting process, students have free topsoil for their organic gardens... Yale will start trucking its 2 tons of cafeteria waste each day, such as coffee grinds, eggshells, broccoli stalks and moldy bread, to a composting plant in Litchfield County to be transformed into potting soil."
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