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USF St. Pete aims to convert nearly 3,000 pounds of food waste into compost weekly by next fall

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Published  April 22, 2025 6:30pm EDT
St. Petersburg
FOX 13 News

Composting initiative aims to reduce food waste

FOX 13's Kailey Tracy shares the latest from USF St. Pete as food waste will soon be put into a composter and made into soil.

The Brief

    • USF St. Pete hopes to start turning food waste in their dining halls into compost.
    • Government grants and private donations are funding the program.
    • The school aims to have the program operating by next fall.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Scraps left on students’ plates and food prep waste from USF St. Pete’s dining halls will soon be composted and turned into soil. 

"This program will look to compost 2,100 to 2,700 pounds of food waste initially each week from the campus," said Maeven Rogers, the director of the City of St. Pete Sustainability and Resilience.

"That food waste will be turned into fertilizer, which then the University of South Florida maintenance crew will purchase off of the composting initiative, and they will be using that to mitigate chemical fertilizer on their campus," Rogers said at a council meeting Thursday. 

Dig deeper:

The industrial-sized composter will be behind one of the dining halls. 

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The school will use a $358,735 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Composting and Food Waste Reduction program to help pay for the composter. 

The grant required the city to co-apply for it, and the St. Petersburg City Council unanimously approved it on Thursday. 

What they're saying:

"We ultimately would like to expand it and continue working with the city, working with our partners and maybe making a bigger operation so that we can basically close the circle here in St. Pete where food waste is not something that we ship off to the landfill, which is better than just burying it," said James Ivey, an associate professor of instruction in environmental science.

"A step above that would be to reuse that waste in a way that we can also offset fertilizers and offset the carbon emissions that would come from burning it or burying it," said Ivey. 

Ivey helped put the grant together. He said they hope that in the program’s second year, students will collect food waste from local markets and restaurants and sell compost to local farmers and the public at places like the Saturday Morning Market. 

They’re already in talks with the Market and 15th Street Farm as potential collaborators. 

"Students get a really neat opportunity to start their own business and see how it can be economically viable in the future," Rogers said. 

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The school also has a $100,000 from the school’s green energy fund, and a $50,000 gift from Duke Energy to eventually pay student workers. 

The money will also be used to hire an employee to manage the program. 

"As an instructor, my biggest joy is seeing the students and seeing them accomplish stuff and what they learn from it," Ivey said. "And so, this is another aspect we can use, not only for the environmental aspects, the sustainability aspects of it, but also for the educational aspects and the benefit it will give to my students for their future career choices."

What's next:

Ivey said they hope to buy the composter within the next six months and have the program on campus by next fall. 

It’s open to any student who wants to participate. 

The school is considering a couple of companies to purchase a composter from, including BioCoTech Americas and EcoRich.

The Source: FOX 13's Kailey Tracy collected the information in this story.

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