While it sounds more like a dare than research, student employees at The Ohio State University are willingly donning plastic suits and masks to dig into trash and pull out tossed food in its various forms: partly eaten, uneaten, wet and reeking. By weighing their findings, they hope to measure and eventually cut food waste on campus

“It’s usually fresh garbage, which is better than old garbage,” said Mary Leciejewski, senior sustainability coordinator for Ohio State’s Facilities, Operations & Development who helps organize the food waste audits.

Audits of discarded food will help the university work toward diverting 90% of food waste from landfills by 2025, one of Ohio State’s sustainability goals. To do this, students and staff are first mapping how much food is brought onto campus and then tossed out at the Wexner Medical Center, in the athletics and advancement departments and at campus dining facilities.

The results of these food waste audits will be shared Oct. 11 at Ohio State’s Food Waste Collaborative Conference, which is sponsored by the College of Food, Agricultural & Environmental Sciences (CFAES).

The on-campus event will feature Brenna Ellison, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, who will present her research on the changing food choices of students in university dining halls. The agenda also includes a discussion on food waste reduction efforts at Ohio State and at other colleges in the state as well as talks about partnerships between universities and local businesses to divert their food waste.

“Nationally about 20% of landfills are occupied by food that was grown at great cost and great resources and transported sometimes thousands of miles only to be put in a landfill, where it produces methane,” said Brian Roe, a CFAES economics professor who leads the Ohio State Food Waste Collaborative.

The collaborative is a collection of researchers, practitioners and students working together to promote the reduction and redirection of food waste.

As households toss out an average of one-third of the food they bring in, nearly one in seven households in Ohio regularly struggles to pay for balanced meals, Roe pointed out, adding, “We’re working on ways to improve both problems.”

Black soldier flies

If you think picking through trash and weighing it seems unconventional, consider the latest effort to help Ohio State cut its food waste: the black soldier fly.

Inside a 45 ft.-long shipping container at the CFAES Waterman Agricultural & Natural Resources Laboratory, a few-million black soldier fly larvae will live in stacked boxes and feed off food that was pitched in campus garbage bins. 

“They eat like you wouldn’t believe,” Roe said.

He estimated that the flies could save the university $40-100 a ton by devouring what’s thrown out. Then, the fly larvae can be fed to chickens, pigs and fish.

“I like to think of these black soldier flies as a SWAT team for breaking down food waste. They come in fast, they come in hard and they get the job done,” said Andrew Jones, a research associate with the Food Waste Collaborative.

The flies are useful only in their larval stage, before they grow wings. After that, they don’t eat much, if anything. So, before the larvae sprout wings, they’ll be collected and sold for animal feed.

Jones, who will be overseeing the flies, filling their trays with discarded food, said he’s unfazed by handling trash and flies for much of the day. “You redefine your definition of disgusting when you’re working with stuff like this,” he said.