Enforced institutional settings such as penitentiaries provide environments to raise awareness, carry out research, and implement and assess practices for sustainable living. Institutions where residence is enforced due to health, recreational, military, or legal reasons (e.g., assisted living centers, summer camps, army bases, prisons) house people who may lack scientific training but have time and need for intellectual stimulation that can be filled by supervised research. These institutions have stable populations, structured social organization, and measurable inputs and outputs of materials and energy to carry out sustainable practices in tasks that affect regional resources such as groundwater quality and landfill use.

Results/Conclusions

We report on one example that we initiated and sustained at a corrections center resulting from partnerships among visiting academic ecology researchers, sustainability practitioners, corrections administrators, and prisoners. This project, a vermiculture and thermophilic composting system, was established to reduce the kitchen waste stream to both improve water quality and instruct staff and inmates about the values of sustainable practices. Over 26 months, landfill-bound waste and particulate flow rated destined for wastewater treatment decreased by 50%, to less than 50% of permit limits. The resulting compost (ca. 5000 kg) fertilized institutional vegetable gardens. In addition, water quality improved so that the prison could return funds allocated to upgrade the prison’s water quality. Certain prisoners involved with the program were inspired to pursue these activities and educational opportunities associated with them during their term and after their release. At the state level, the Department of Corrections has viewed this as a positive approach and has extended practices to other correctional centers.  This can be a model for other correctional facilities and other enforced residential institutions.