May 10, 2012

Today in class we went to the compost facility on OU's campus. I do not know a whole lot about composting and I had never seen a compost facility before today. It was kind of cool to see how much composting they do and how the reuse the compost that they make. The facility is funded through a grant and then the university. Because they use an in-house (enclosed) composting machine they do not need as many workers because the machine does all the churning. So instead they only need one full-time worker and then they use about 5 student workers. I was expecting the facility to smell extremely bad since they compost everything including dairy and eggs but in general it did not smell that bad. You would get a whiff of something bad smelling every once in a while but in general it wasnt that bad which is good I think. I definitely could not work there with a smell of old food because it just upsets your stomach. They are currently only able to compost for the Central foods facility and one dining hall but they are expanding so that they can compost for everywhere on campus which is really cool. They also use their compost on the intramural fields here on campus which I found to be very interesting! I did not know they used it in areas like that.

Then we went to the Ecohouse. This house uses solar panels and thermal panels, as well as it collects its own water to use for flushing the toilets. They also have a composting pile there and a garden that is free to anyone! Students can live in this ecohouse. Only 3 students can live there a year and you can be of any major you just need to be interested in sustainability and then you can work on a project that interests you. I think that it was good that they allow any major because people are interested in many things besides just their major.