Frostburg students, have you ever wondered what happens to your leftover food and scraps after you leave Chesapeake dining hall? Ever since I arrived at Frostburg state I have often pondered the same question. Chesapeake Dining hall serves four meals a day, Breakfast, lunch dinner and late-night dining, with enough food to serve to serve Frostburg’s populations of nearly 6,000 students and teachers. Surely this will lead to tons of trash bags full of waste every single day right? Wrong Frostburg has implemented a system to keep the waste from your food very minimal, and the little waste that is produced is put to good use. By reading this article you will learn all about this intriguing system.
Today April 18, 2018, I took a tour in depth into Chesapeake dining hall’s kitchen for a focus Frostburg event to learn more about their disposable process. When I got to the event, there was one male student and three women waiting to accompany me on the tour. Our tour guide was David Glenn the Director of food services at Frostburg State University. Glenn introduced himself to us, stating he has over 10 years of experience in the food department here at Frostburg, and explained to us that he and his team is always trying their best to bring students their best meal possible. Glenn then took us right behind the conveyor belt of used plates to show the first step of the disposable process. “First we have our dishwasher scrape plates from the belt into this machine called a centrifuge, and what this does is basically pump all of the water out of the scraps and separate the two” Glenn explained. A woman asked, “So what happens to the leftover water?” To which Glenn responded “oh it just goes into the sewer like any other used water. “The product from the centrifuge is then put into a bucket and taken to the machine I’m going to show you all next” Glenn stated. We then followed Glenn even deeper into the kitchen into a back room, where we came face to face with “The Rocket”. The Rocket is a 10-foot stainless steel behemoth of a composite machine for food waste. Glenn states “This is what we call the Rocket, this turns our food waste into rich mulch” Glenn stated. After all the water is taken out the food by the centrifuge, the food is mixed with wood chips and put inside of the Rocket. The Rocket churns and heats the mixture slowly for about 10 to 14 and the mulch comes out the other end, the process is continuous so more waste can be added at any time. “So what happens to the finished material when it comes out the machine?” a woman from the crowd asked. “Well around this time a year we give it to” Frostburg grows “Glenn responded. A man from the crowd then asked: “is this expensive to keep up and running?” “Well electric for this machine is very minimal but the cost of the machine along with centrifuge is about $75000,” Glenn responded. This Focus Frostburg event was extremely interesting and might have answered a lot of questions Frostburg students had. So next time you are Walking to the cafeteria and you smell manure, no it not your food being cooked, but your old food being ground into nutritious mulch.
Link to Ways our Food Waste can be put to good use:.
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