The rockefeller university

This July, the university will expand its composting program to include buildings such as the Graduate Students Residence (pictured above) and Sophie Fricke Hall.

Composting bins have become a familiar sight around Rockefeller University’s residential buildings—brown containers set out weekly alongside garbage and recycling. Inside are onion skins, coffee grounds, apple cores, and eggshells: food scraps that once went straight to landfill.

Those scraps are given new purpose as they are collected separately and transformed by the Department of Sanitation into nutrient-rich soil or renewable energy.

Now, that initiative is set to expand across campus, adding new bins outside the Graduate Students Residence and Sophie Fricke Hall to the initial round of collection sites located at Faculty House and Scholars Residence.

“Over the next few weeks, we’re excited to grow this popular program,” says Alex Kogan, associate vice president of Plant Operations & Housing. “We’ve already seen our compost increase tremendously over the past year, because residents have really embraced it. It’s become part of the routine.”

New York City’s curbside composting program, which took effect this spring, requires all residents to separate food waste from regular trash. The city aims to reduce methane emissions from landfills and produce usable materials for local parks, gardens, and farms.

An early campus initiative

At Rockefeller, interest in composting was seeded well before the citywide mandate. A few years ago, a sustainability-minded graduate student proposed collecting food scraps near the on-campus daycare center to support a children’s vegetable garden. The idea resonated, and the university supported the effort.

“It was a nice, closed-loop idea—food waste helping to nourish the next crop,” Kogan says. “We thought it made a lot of sense.”

The program was briefly paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, but as it returned so did participation. To help residents compost effectively, Kogan’s team provides clear guidelines and regular reminders.

“You do have to be careful—things like plastic or metal can’t go in the compost,” Kogan notes. “But a little education helps, and people have been very conscientious.”

Meanwhile, the campus dining hall, which is managed by a third-party vendor, has taken other meaningful steps to support sustainability, offering more plant-forward meals, reducing meat-based options, eliminating single-use plastics, and donating surplus food to local nonprofits.

Kogan says the culture shift is clear: “People want to do the right thing, and now it’s easy. As you prepare your evening meal, simply carry your vegetable trimmings downstairs, confident they will be transformed into something truly beneficial.”