By giving Ohio University a $250,000 grant, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources hopes OU’s composting project will set a trend for recycling at colleges and universities statewide.

“OU’s project is going to be on such a scale that it really sets itself apart,” said Larry Cooper, recycling programs coordinator at ODNR’s Division of Recycling and Litter Prevention. “OU is taking an approach that is significantly more comprehensive and the scale is way, way larger.”

The university will use the grant and university funds to purchase and install a contained composting system — one of the first at a college or university in the state. It will be capable of processing 3 tons of waste a day, or roughly a quarter of the total waste generated per year.

Youngstown State University has a small contained composter, but it handles only 100 pounds daily, Cooper said.

“It’s something we wanted to do for a long time, probably 10 to 15 years,” said Ed Newman, recycling and refuse manager at OU. “The decision for the student center to go with disposable utensils was the catalyst to get over the threshold.”

Newman said the project proposal included the creation of another staff position to maintain the unit, but because of OU’s precarious budget deficit, the position is not set in stone.

The ODNR grant will fund half of the total project cost. The remaining $250,000 will come from Facilities Management and Auxiliary Services, said Sonia Marcus, resource conservation coordinator.

“It will be universitywide, and it isn’t just food,” Marcus said. “Eating utensils, animal bedding from research labs, grounds waste from landscaping, and the sawdust from the carpentry shop can all go feed in to this system.”

The contained system can better control things like rodents, smell and runoffs. It can process the waste faster because of accurate moisture, temperature and movement controls.

“They all basically have a large tunnel system through which biodegradable waste is moved over several days,” Marcus said. It will take as little as 14 days to transform the waste into soil additives.

The system’s location has not been finalized, but Marcus said a site at The Ridges was well suited for the program.

OU will receive bids in July, when the ODNR funds are released. The unit will most likely have to be shipped from another country because it is not produced in the United States — “yet another example of how the U.S. is lagging behind in environmental issues,” Marcus said.