“Anything with nutritional value that we’d normally eat can go in the ORCA,” says Shannon Melizan, an ORCA Sales Associate.
By James Bennett III
We may never know if androids dream of electric sheep. But if they pooped, it would probably be done in a similar manner to the ORCA, USF St. Petersburg’s new food waste management system.
The Student Green Energy Fund passed a majority vote Feb. 11 to implement the ORCA as USF St. Petersburg’s primary method of food waste disposal. It plans on leasing the ORCA for three years for $550 per month, according to a report created by Andrea Rodriguez Campos and Emma Jacobs, the chair and vice chair of SGEF.
In comparison, The Reef spends about $875.11 a month on trash collection.
The same report stated that USF St. Petersburg will be the first university in the state to implement this type of technology, and calculations predict that the university will save $8,150 in the three years that the machine will be leased.
According to ORCA’s website, microorganisms and oxygen aerobically break down waste, such as meat trimmings and vegetable stems, leaving a product that is 75 percent water, 5 percent minerals and 20 percent carbs, fats and proteins. The effluent liquid is then filtered through a 0.44mm screen made of stainless steel and sent to the St. Petersburg Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The OG 15 model, also known as the Baby ORCA, breaks down 15 pounds of waste in one hour. The “digestion” process does not produce any additional odor, so when the airtight lid is open, it will only smell like the waste about to be disposed of.
The Baby ORCA was specifically recommended for the St. Petersburg campus by an ORCA representative and is the smallest, cheapest model available.
Edible food will still be collected by the Food Recovery Club and donated to local shelters. The ORCA will only be used for waste that cannot be donated.
With the current system, roughly 40 pounds of waste are thrown in the garbage every week. Once the sanitation department collects the waste, it will be burned in a furnace and buried at the Pinellas County Solid Waste site.
The ORCA is set to be installed by the end of this semester, after a space impact request form and a purchase order form have been submitted by SGEF.
