Soilless Soil Update: UPenn Waste Audit

To kick off the Soilless Soil Penn Pilot Study, OLIN Labs Associate Rebecca Popowsky and UPenn student researchers spent one Friday night with Maurice Sampson of Niche Recycling, to observe a detailed waste audit that Niche performed of on-campus restaurants, cafés and bars. The waste audit will provide the research team and the University with a breakdown of the types and volumes of waste coming out of these facilities, as well an understanding of the level of contaminants that make their way into the recycling stream.

The Soilless Soil Penn Pilot team, which includes three UPenn student Eco-Reps, Samantha Friskey, Karen Chi and Richard Ling, and one PennDesign/McHarg Center research assistant, Kate Trosman, is tasked with creating a feasibility study of a closed-loop waste stream on Penn’s campus, diverting and processing waste glass to be used in landscape applications on campus. This study aims to provide a logistical and financial model to support the Soilless Soil concept at the University scale, with the ultimate goal of growing the study to the scale of the city. The feasibility study is being run in parallel with the Soilless Soil horticultural study, which aims to determine the functionality of glass fines as a topsoil component in green infrastructure installations.