news

With more than 11,000 students and more than 1,000 faculty and staff, the dining hall at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) stays busy serving more than 3,000 meals daily. That can add up to a lot of food waste if all those diners don’t clean their plates. One student decided to find a way to repurpose all that organic material, making GGC’s dining operations more sustainable while at the same time providing a teaching tool to students.

Stephen D. Johnson, 28, a senior studying environmental science with a focus in natural science, developed the program named Roots to Shoots to solve food needs, food waste, and food production issues that he saw at GGC. The program takes food waste from the GGC dining hall and uses it for soil compost at GGC’s microfarm, which is used to grow fruits and vegetables for the dining hall and local food banks.

Johnson, a native of Jamaica, who currently lives in Duluth, started the program as part of his capstone class project in the fall 2022 semester because it was a need he could meet using the knowledge he’s acquired as an environmental science major. He and second-year environmental science student K.J. Hartfield, 23, of Dacula, collect food waste from the dining hall every Tuesday and Friday and deliver it to the microfarm compost system, where it begins the cycle that will end as fresh fruits and vegetables on meal plates for students and those in need.

“I wanted to bring recognition to Georgia Gwinnett College and its environmental science program by engaging students with a hands-on experience that will equip them for the work world,” said Johnson. “GGC is a University System of Georgia college with a mission to educate and contribute to the community. The Roots to Shoots program intends to fulfill this mission through education, sustainable farming practice and community engagement.”

GGC professor of biology Dr. James Russell said Johnson’s program is an excellent example of collaboration between different entities at the college and the local community.

“A local non-profit organization donated the three-bin compost system we currently use at the microfarm, the GGC dining hall has been instrumental in collecting and sorting food waste for the compost system, GGC Fleet Services provide transportation twice a week for movement of food waste to the microfarm, and the GGC Environmental Science Department oversees the compost system and microfarm management,” said Russell. “It’s an excellent example of the good that can be done when different areas work together.”

Johnson said the program’s current focus is on soil creation (“the roots”), and future efforts will be to develop sustainable agricultural practices and products (“the shoots”) that will be used for educational, environmental and social outreach. He hopes for Roots to Shoots to be incorporated into the college’s curriculum so that it continues to grow long after he’s graduated.

“I want people to know that Roots to Shoots is more than a cyclical system. It is a program that teaches students how to be self-sustaining, how to recycle and make good compost from the waste we already have, and how to limit the waste we produce and put it to good use,” said Johnson.

Johnson said he designed the program to teach students more than how to be self-sufficient. One of its main goals is to also teach them how to become leaders and teachers in their communities by equipping them with practical social science skills such as communication, reasoning and problem-solving, using math and science to find solutions as they work with students and community leaders both on and off campus.

“It’s a program all colleges can adopt,” said Johnson. “I would love to see this system adopted by other institutions so that we can keep this practice going because it’s beneficial to the environment and the people who live in it too.”

View and download Roots to Shoots program photos.