Six students in Professor Joe Regenstein’s Agriculture and Life Sciences 4470: Environmental Stewardship in the Cornell Community are investigating Collegetown composting for their class project. The group is composed of six juniors and seniors, led by Kristen Vitro ’11.

Cornell students participate in a national competition to divert waste from landfills.  

At his Worm Power facility 100 miles northwest of Ithaca in Avon, N.Y. Tom Herlihy feeds 20 tons of dairy cow manure to eight million earthworms each week. About 28 days after they are fed, the worms churn out “vermicompost” – a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer.  Allison Jack grad, plant pathology and plant-microbe biology, has shown that vermicompost can suppress disease in crop plants.

After swimming in the lake and a few rounds of fetch at the Ithaca Dog Park on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Sophie, an eight-year-old plump English lab, shyly deposited a small pile of doo next to a bush. Her owner, Prof. Leon Kochian, plant biology, picked up the poop, dumped it into a free black bag obtained at one of the five bag dispensers in the Park and disposed of the evidence in a sky-blue bin labeled “compost” located at the Park’s entrance.