Texas university teams up with local composter to divert food waste

Baylor University in Texas has partnered with Houston-based compost company Moonshot Compost to help divert food waste from the near-capacity Waco Landfill.

Moonshot Compost drops off collection bins to its subscribers such as Baylor. The company will then take the bins to compost facilities, where the waste is combined with other materials to create compost.

Smith Getterman, director of sustainability and special projects at Baylor, tells KWTX that the university has been trying to find affordable ways to compost its food waste for about a decade or more. Kevin Merritt, food service director for Baylor Dining, says one of Baylor’s goals is to reduce the amount of food being sent to landfills.

“The actual process of composting has gotten cheaper to produce compost over the years,” Merritt says. “When we first started this, initial estimates were substantially less than what they were several years ago, so we decided now would be a good time to try.”

Baylor subscribed to Moonshot for its Penland Dining Hall in April.

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“We have more people coming through Penland Dining Hall than any other on campus,” Getterman says. “It really just seemed like a no-brainer to start here because it would really give us the best idea of how this would work.”

Students can place their plates on a revolving dishwasher that is sent to the back. Employees then discard food into a processor where it is converted into small pieces of food, then dumped into the bin.

Moonshot picks up the bin and takes it to a compost facility in Austin where they combine food waste with yard waste and other components, and, after three months to a year, the materials are transformed into nutrient-rich soil used to grow crops and produce.

Moonshot collects data on how much food waste is diverted from landfills and sent to compost facilities. Since April, data on Moonshot’s online dashboard reports that Penland Dining Hall has diverted more than 28,000 pounds of food from going to Waco’s landfill.

“Just a couple of months later, we’ve already composted a little over 12 tons,” Getterman tells KWTX. “So, the answer is yes, it does work.”

Baylor now has plans to expand its subscription with Moonshot Compost to include two more dining halls on campus.

“Expanding it across campus to be able to divert even more from the landfill is a good thing not only for Baylor but for McLennan County and the state,” Merritt says.

Waco’s landfill has been a concern for the city as it is predicted to reach capacity in July 2025, according to KWTX. The city of Waco has plans in the works to build a new landfill in Axtell, about 15 miles northeast of Waco.