Northland started composting in 1993 when student volunteers first initiated food waste diversion on campus. We collect campus food waste from our dining facilities and residential halls, and we also host a community food waste collection site near the Hulings Rice Food Center.

For nearly thirty years, work-study and volunteer students managed campus and community food scrap collection, monitored aerobic composting, and distributed finished compost to campus gardens.

In 2021, our compost program spun off into Big Lake Organics LLC, a Chequamegon Bay regional composting service offering residential and commercial food waste collection, aerobic organics composting, and garden-ready compost delivery.

Roughly thirty thousand pounds of food scraps are collected annually from our campus (29,817 pounds of organic waste was diverted from the landfill in the 2023–24 academic year).

Environmental Impact

• Composting can help reduce fossil fuels needed for transporting local foods and local food waste and concentrating our waste system’s stream.
• Composting can decrease the most harmful greenhouse gases: decomposition of food wastes in landfills produces methane, while carbon dioxide is the byproduct of composting. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates methane produces twenty times more heat-capturing properties than carbon dioxide.
• Returning finished compost to regional farms augments soils and reduces agricultural use of petro-chemicals due to an increase of beneficial organisms and bacteria. Compost also improves water retention, which reduces agricultural runoff and water use.