A grant from Virginia Department of Environmental Quality helps transform years of student-led sustainability work into a campuswide effort
University News | September 30, 2026
During Food Waste Prevention Week, Batten University is taking a closer look at what happens to food scraps after they leave the plate—and how a growing campus composting initiative is helping keep those materials out of the landfill. Thanks to support from a grant from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Batten University is expanding its composting efforts, strengthening food waste prevention practices and creating new opportunities for students, faculty and staff to participate in sustainability initiatives.
The progress is already measurable. According to the University’s environmental impact dashboard, Batten University has diverted 10,264 pounds of material through its composting efforts. That diversion is equivalent to approximately 10,181 miles not driven, 461 gallons of gasoline, 4,536 pounds of coal and 498,820 smartphones charged. The University’s efforts have also saved approximately 5.1 tons of waste from being landfilled and are equivalent to 67 urban tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
While the current DEQ grant is providing new momentum, Batten’s composting efforts began more than a decade ago. A small-scale composting program was operating in campus dining as early as the 2010s, collecting pre-consumer food scraps. At the time, however, the program remained limited in scope, diverting approximately 20 pounds of food waste each week.
The University’s participation in the 2020 and 2021 Campus Race to Zero Waste provided a clearer picture of the opportunity. The data showed that a significant portion of campus waste was coming from dining, prompting the University community to consider how composting could be expanded.
In 2022–23, Batten Honors College student Abigail Mahoney '24 helped take the next step. Working with the student organization Marlins Go Green, Dining Services, Campus Horticulturist Skyler Lattuca and Professor Elizabeth Malcolm, Mahoney helped expand the program to include post-consumer food waste while increasing student education and participation.
Marlins Go Green helped fund additional composting infrastructure and organized student volunteers to teach their peers how to compost properly. The results were significant: the effort increased the University’s composting rate by approximately 500 percent. More importantly, the initiative demonstrated that successful composting involves more than placing a bin on campus. Education, engagement and participation are essential to making sure food waste is sorted correctly and consistently.
That lesson continued through the research of recent Batten Honors College graduate Tyler Noll ’26, whose work examined how the University could develop a more comprehensive and sustainable campus composting program. At the 2026 Louis and Prudence Ryan Environmental Research Symposium, Noll presented “Implementing a Campus Composting Program Framework to Advance Sustainability at VWU and Beyond.” His award-winning research explored what it would take to create a successful campus composting system—not simply by adding more collection bins, but by building education, student engagement and community partnerships into the program. Now, that research complements a broader food waste initiative underway on campus.
With support from the DEQ grant, the University is putting the framework into practice through a pilot composting program happening this semester.
Building a Campuswide Culture of Composting
The current pilot focuses on strategically placing collection bins in locations where they can have the greatest impact. Data collected during the pilot will help the University determine how the program should grow, including where additional bins are needed, how contamination can be reduced and what educational efforts will be most effective.
A partnership with Tidewater Compost is an important part of that effort. Tidewater Compost has provided training for campus staff and access to an environmental impact dashboard that allows the University to track and report the results of its composting initiatives.
The DEQ grant also supports a broader vision for food waste prevention. Over the three-year grant period, Batten University hopes to build toward diverting 90 percent of food waste. Reaching that goal will require more than collecting food scraps. The University is working to:
- Expand collection to include both pre- and post-consumer food waste.
- Explore ways to prevent food waste within conference and catering operations.
- Provide students with more opportunities to learn about food waste prevention and composting.
- Strengthen partnerships and processes that can support the program over the long term.
- Use data from the pilot to guide future expansion and reduce contamination.
The initiative also looks beyond composting to address food waste at its source. Through the grant, Batten University is examining food waste within conference and catering operations to identify opportunities to prevent excess food from becoming waste in the first place and to develop practices that can be expanded across campus over time.
The University’s composting story illustrates how sustainability initiatives can grow through a combination of student leadership, research, institutional support and community partnerships. What began with a small dining operation collecting roughly 20 pounds of pre-consumer food scraps each week has evolved into a larger campus initiative backed by data and student research and supported through a three-year DEQ grant. The impact dashboard provides a snapshot of how far that work has come: 10,264 pounds, or approximately 5.1 tons, diverted from the landfill.
But the numbers tell only part of the story. The larger goal is to make composting—and thinking critically about food waste—a routine part of campus life. By investing in infrastructure, education and people, Batten University is working to create a culture in which reducing food waste becomes something the entire University community can take part in.
During Food Waste Prevention Week and beyond, every meal offers another opportunity to make a difference.