, and the PSU Environmental Club. Hopefully someday the orchard will sprout a food waste digester.Lastly, I'd like to thank my research partner Emily Heleva-Ponaski for working countless hours with me on this project through rough days, terrible smells, and even a broken windshield.It wouldn't have been funny without you around. 2 ABSTRACTSix gallons of food waste was anaerobically digested for 76 days in two small-scale digesters sitting by a lab window. The main difference, besides waste sources, of these digesters was substrate processing: chopping versus blending. An effort was made to minimize the maintenance of the digesters, however, after 45 days of overly acidic (pH<5) conditions sodium carbonate was added to raise the pH. Both digesters were subsequently seeded with digested sludge from a local wastewater treatment plant, and which time methane production greatly increased. However, by the end of the experiment, total solids reduction, volatile solids reduction, and methane production was greatly lower than values from similar studies. The most likely issue identified was lack of temperature control (too cold) as well as low pH. While the digesters were far from optimized, they did reduce solids, produce methane, and identify ways to avoid similar issues for projects in the future.3