College students bring composting to retirement community

Two college students working in the kitchen at Masonicare’s Ashlar Village sick of seeing hundreds of pounds of food go to waste have started a program that converts food scraps to compost to be used by residents for gardening in the retirement community free of charge.

Kristen Chaney, 23, started the program this summer after seeing a similar compost project while at school at Southern Connecticut State University. Chaney brought on board coworker Marlea Naples, 19, to help draft a proposal and bring the project to life.

“The residents have gardens and I figured we had a lot of waste and we need to cut down on waste and it would be a good way to re-purpose it,” Chaney said.

Once gaining approval for the project, Chaney and Naples helped inform the kitchen staff by hanging up signs reminding workers what foods can and cannot be composted, in addition to creating an informational video. Compostable food items include fruits, vegetables, egg shells and coffee grinds. Other items safe to compost are tea bags and coffee filters.

In just two weeks, 300 pounds of food scraps were collected for composting by the kitchen staff.

Each day, the girls weighed the food to be added to the compost and measured the internal temperature of the compost to ensure it was at least 110 degrees before stirring in the new ingredients.

The compost takes about a month to decompose or “cook,” before it is ready to be used as fertilizer for gardens in the village. Chaney said they may also make “compost tea,” which involves straining the compost into a nutrient rich liquid which can be used to water plants.

Naples said those interested in starting their own compost bins should educate themselves on the process before jumping in.

“There’s a lot of myths, so you definitely have to do you research beforehand.” Naples said.

Director of Food Services for Ashlar Village Jules Martin said the facility cooks 550 meals per day, and the program utilizes about 150 pounds of food a week that would have been thrown away. He said he is excited to see if the program could turn into something bigger.