At Syracuse University, around 14,000 students rely on receiving at least two meals a day from one of the university’s dining halls. Collectively, their food scraps end up in the compost bins at the university’s various sustainability stations, but what happens to their food waste after that, is a mystery to many students.

In this video, we visit the Sadler, Brockway, and Ernie Davis dining halls, and interview students on this very subject. By diving into Syracuse University’s policies on food waste and visiting the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency’s (OCRRA) Amboy Compost Site, we aim to educate students on the facilities and processes that help keep this school sustainable. We take an in-depth look into OCRRA’s aerated static pile system, which separates the Amboy site from other municipal composting sites.