Repurposed Wine Waste
Repurposed Wine Waste. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.
There is an interesting dynamic at colleges like WSU. That dynamic is the interchange of ideas between departments that accomplish several things including offering other learning experiences for students. Students in linked biology and chemistry courses worked with the Wine Science Center this semester to test "recipes" for composting wine pomace. Elly Sweet is a clinical assistance professor at WSU Tri-Cities
SWEET: One of the projects that we had been talking about was a compost project where we could really show students some of those connections between chemistry and biology. We got in contact with another member on our campus about where we could compost and she happened to be working with the student environmental club.
That became a very mutually beneficial agreement.
SWEET: What we decided to do was have our students in my class do sort of a trial run on some waste material from the wine science center. They learned about the waste material, the pomace that comes out after wine production and how this material currently has to be disposed of but that we could then take that and turn it into something that would be useful, could then be used back in the actual vineyard.
The students created eight compost recipes from pomace at the Wine Science Center, incorporating leaves, grass and cow manure to complete their mixtures.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.
