News
Middlebury expands campus composting initiative
July 23, 2010
Middlebury, VT - From the article:
Twice a week, every week, Middlebury College's custom-equipped Freightliner dump truck rumbles up South Street with about 10,000 pounds of food waste. It's destination? The College's composting facility where the staff from facilities services turn food waste into about 1,500 cubic yards of compost a year.
Melissa Beckwith, manager of waste management at the College, explains the ins and outs of composting. Composting can be a long and complicated process, both in terms of its labor and its science, but it's one that Middlebury has been dedicated to since 1993, not only to save money and reduce its carbon footprint, but also to maintain and improve the natural beauty of its campus.
"Compost increases soil fertility, not in a traditional 'fertilizer' approach, but by increasing porosity, nutrient capacity, and water-holding characteristics," explains Tim Parsons, the College horticulturalist. "Organic matter creates a living, breathing soil, a more natural ecosystem in an artificial construct, that of our trees, shrubs, and lawns."
Photograph by Robert Keren
Read the full article:
Mining Black Gold (Middlebury Magazine)
About Lucid Design Group
Lucid Design Group, Inc. is a privately held cleantech software company, founded in 2004, and a pioneer in providing real-time information feedback to teach, inspire behavior change and save energy and water resources in buildings. Over the past six years, Lucid's team has endeavored to make resource use visible, accessible and engaging so that building occupants have the data visualization and communication tools to manage and reduce their consumption.
Today, tens of thousands of people live and work in schools, companies, community and commercial buildings and homes enhanced by Lucid's web-based Building Dashboard® technology. Now in its fourth generation, the intuitive Building Dashboard® user interface allows occupants to connect personal electricity, water and natural gas consumption with the actions and events that take place within buildings.
