A Town Gown Partnership
Grounds Management is always looking for ways to reduce ISU’s solid waste stream. In a cooperative project with the Town of Normal, a program has been developed and established that has not only saved the University money, but at the same time has reduced our solid waste and solved a problem for the Town of Normal.
With a campus community of 24,000 we generate a large amount of solid wood waste. Standard items include brush, desks, tables and chairs, but there is also a large amount of dimensional lumber, doors, cabinets, etc which was all was being loaded into our compactor and hauled to the local landfill.
The campus also has over 27 acres of mulched beds. Each year most of these mulched beds were being chipped with purchased hardwood mulch, with an annual cost of over $16,000.
The Town of Normal picks up yard waste from the residents’ homes on a weekly basis and grinds this material into wood chips which they in turn, offer back to the residents to use in their yards. The Town had no problem during the growing season to distribute back into the community the processed mulch, but in the winter time, there was still a great deal of yard waste being generated from fall and winter pruning and very few people were wanting to haul and spread wood chips. In addition, if an ice storm hit the area, the Town was overloaded with yard waste and processed mulch.
Meeting with the Town, Grounds offered to provide space at our nursery for them to stockpile the mulch whenever they had space problems. In return, the Town allowed the University to haul all of our wood products to their grinding facility, and agreed to grind it into mulch. ISU purchases special grinding blades for the Town to use, resulting in a much finer and better quality product for the University’s use. In many cases the very desks, chairs and doors that students, faculty, and staff used in the buildings of campus are now protecting and holding moisture and nutrients for the campus trees and shrubs.
