College students at Georgia Gwinnet College are working to make sure leftover food doesn’t go to waste.
Stephen Johnson, an environmental science major, started the Roots to Shoots program, which takes food waste from the campus dining hall and puts them to good use.
"I wanted to take that, bring it to the micro-farm, turn it into compost. Because we had terrible soil. We wanted to create better soil so that we produce better food so that we could then bring that produce back to the dining hall," Johnson said. "GGC wanted to do outreach, and I wanted to expose GGC to the community."
Several students helping with the program and a dining services employee, all help to take food scraps, load them up, and bring all if it to a composting box at the campus’ micro-farm where their biology professor, James Russel, manages the garden.
"We're gonna harvest in June about 100 pounds of potatoes from that raised bed right there," Russell said, pointing to the bed. "Then, we've also got kale, we've got beans, we've got some tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, mint, oregano, turmeric."
Produce from the garden will be shared with local food panties on campus and in the community.