By Claire Regan ’80
In a little corner of the campus, out of the path of the Starship delivery robots and away from the hustle and bustle of college life, a small but mighty group of Wagner students led by Athanasia Theofilopoulos ’24 is building an ecosystem and leaving their footprint on the future.
The Wagner Community Composting Project — part of the Environmental Studies program within the Department of Biological Sciences — operates on a piece of land off Campus Road between the Spiro Sports Center and Foundation Hall parking lots.
“It’s rewarding to see how our campus combats food waste first-hand,” said Theofilopoulos, a senior anthropology and international relations major and the student compost coordinator. “Composting is a way to connect with our environment while understanding the importance of homegrown food.”
The project has inspired Theofilopoulos to start composting at home in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Adam Jadhav, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Celeste Gagnon, chair of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, advise the ongoing project.
Some student-composters grew up never touching soil, said Jadhav, known on campus as “the green professor.”
“We show them how to get dirt under their fingernails, how to touch and feel the world,” he said.
“Be ready to get your hands dirty!” Theofilopoulos said of her message to interested students. “You’ll appreciate being outside a lot more and learn about environmentalism in urban areas.”
As compost coordinator, Theofilopoulos receives a small stipend for her efforts, and students in related courses taught by Jadhav and Gagnon can earn class credit working at the site.
Food scraps are gathered and dumped on a “pie layer” of previous compost and leaves and chopped into small pieces to help with decomposition. Three major players — fungi, bacteria and invertebrates (the “F.B.I.”) — produce healthy compost.
After an extended rest, the compost gets a quick sift to eliminate wood chips and other large items that didn’t break down. The finished, sifted material then completes its cycle and re-enters the earth by providing plant life with a boost of nutrition.
Through collaboration with the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden and other nonprofit organizations, the project allows students to connect with the community and teaches critical lessons about climate change.
According to Recycling Works, a program in Massachusetts, the average college student generates 142 pounds of food waste per year. And college campuses as a whole toss a total of 22 million pounds of uneaten food each year, the Food Recovery Network has found.
Composting offers a long list of benefits. It cuts down on food waste by decomposing organic material into a humus-like material, reduces the amount of waste in landfills and the production of harmful greenhouse gases, prevents erosion, improves soil health and combats climate change.
“We have to be aware of the environmental crisis; we have to respond to it,” Jadhav said. “This project can open the door to so much more.”
He praised the student volunteers like Theofilopoulos who are committed to digging into the project to keep it going, and encourages a campus-wide focus on sustainability. He’d like to improve food scrap collections, especially from the dining hall, envisions an orchard on campus with fruit and berry trees, and hopes to host a pumpkin-carving party in the fall, using proceeds from the garden.
“We have a duty to the land,” Jadhav said emphatically.
