I did some research earlier this semester in hopes of expanding the composting efforts at my Uni; I felt that UC Davis' food waste audits from the past couple of years were particularly well done. They include details on methods as well as results for multiple audits. Though my group and I were unfortunately not able to improve our composting program, I hope that this helps and yours works wonderfully!

Mackenzie - Some years back, I was the project manager for a compost training program for the US Army at Ft. Lewis, in Washington State. This was a large scale / long term project and much of our work depended on the results of a comprehensive solid waste audit lead by Cascadia Consulting Group in Seattle (contact: Charlie Scott). I highly recommend them for this type of work. If it relates strictly to food waste, my company O2Compost can be of assistance, especially with the design of your compost system and operator training. We have completed several university systems and are just completing one for St. John's University in New York City. I can be reached at 360-568-8085 if you'd like to discuss it further.

Hi Mackenzie-
We started food scrap composting in August of 2010 for preconsumer food scrap from kitchens. In our kitchens there were rolling trash cans that staff would wheel around the back of the kitchen. Since we were going for pre-consumer we started by auditing these bins. It wasn't hi-tech. We taped a tarp down on a flat surface, jumped in our tyvek suits, gloved up & started dumping bags. The bags were "fresh" so it wasn't bad. What we found was mostly food scrap with some recyclables. Next we staff educated on getting the recyclables out of the trash & into the blue bins & then we got green bins for the food scrap & worked with our City to educate staff on putting food scrap into the green bins.
We also audited the post consumer trash just to see what was going in there- that will be the next challenge.

Call if you have questions!
Krista Mays
UCSD
College & University Recycling Coalition Steer

Hi Mackenzie,

I have written a couple of blog posts about my experiences with waste audits over the years:

http://blog.max-r.net/2011/09/06/surviving-the-dreaded-waste-audit-part-1/
http://blog.max-r.net/2011/09/08/surviving-the-dreaded-waste-audit-part-2/

When you mention starting in your law school, do they have their own cafeteria area? Are you looking to do primarily in dining areas and break rooms (which I would recommend at least to start), or are you looking to do throughout a building?

If in a Foodservice area, remember to engage the foodservice managers. What we see is as waste is for them wasted food - food that costs them a lot of money to source and prepare. As such, they can get a lot of feedback about their menu offerings based on the info they get from such a waste audit. I have had several schools change their serving habit based on the info they see in a waste audit or composting pilot. Some examples are no automatic pickles with deli sandwiches (after they saw the predominance of them uneaten in the compost bin), offering a 1/2 size sandwich (after they saw a significant number of 1/2 eaten sandwiches), and even some changes in the frequency in which they offer certain selections (a waste audit will often give you much more realistic feedback about the popularity of certain menu items than a comment card will).

The flip side of that, is that if you need a certain amount of material to justify your composting program, be prepared for whatever number you find in your audit to decrease over time (at least in the short term). When folks see the magnitude of the food waste, dining services folks will often start to make some menu changes that will decrease the amount of food being wasted. If your collection amounts start to decrease after a pilot program, don't leap to the conclusion that your compost program was a failure. Look at your serving trends - you may find that the program was a spectacular success in that it led to less food being wasted in the first place.

Also remember with food waste that food is putrescable. That is a fancy word that means it has the potential to stink real bad and attract pests. You can't let food sit between pickups the way you can paper or cardboard. Whatever plan you develop has to include very frequent pickups - essentially as frequent as the trash pickup, or nearly so.

Hope this helps.