Student volunteers initiated the campus composting program in 1993. Today, our compost program is still lead by work-study students who manage every aspect, including daily food scrap collection, monitoring the biological process, and final distribution.

In the past year alone, we’ve turned 170,000 pounds of campus, community, and business food waste and organic material (leaves, wood chips, and cardboard) into 28 tons of valuable soil.

Northland College partners with Big Lake Organics, LLC—a business that was spun off from the Hulings Rice Food Center after being incubated at Northland College. Learn more about the future of compost at Northland.

Environmental Impact

• Reducing fossil fuels needed for transporting local foods and local food waste and concentrating our waste systems stream.
• Decreasing the most harmful greenhouse gases: decomposition of food wastes in landfills produces methane, while carbon dioxide is the byproduct of composting. The EPA estimates methane produces twenty times more heat capturing properties than carbon dioxide.
• Returning finished compost to regional farms augments soils and reduces agricultural use of petro-chemicals due to an increase of beneficial in organisms and bacteria. Compost also improves water retention which reduces agricultural runoff and water use.