No One Remembers When Michigan State Powered Its Campus with Rotten Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise may be a 'miracle' condiment. A spread and salad dressing of simple ingredients like eggs and oil.

But for a time in the history of Michigan State University, it was also fuel that powered the campus and kept the lights on.

👇🏼BELOW: Check Out These Official Out-of-State Official License Plates Honoring Michigan State and the University of Michigan + These Tiny Michigan Counties Have Less than 10,000 Residents👇🏼

The mayo power incident happened in 2017. The food service provider on campus found that they had 500 containers of expired, rotten mayonnaise. Rather than just landfill the stuff, they got inventive.

They were able to feed the jugs of mayonnaise into an "anerobic digestor" and the machine converted the stuff into useable electricity.

READ MORE: Michigan State Softball Player Makes Critical Baserunning Error in Viral Video

Each of the 500 jugs held 2 and a half gallons of mayo meaning they had 1,2500 gallons of mayo to convert.

A State News report at the time picks up the story:

The anaerobic digester thrives on foods high in sugars and fats, which is exactly what mayonnaise is...The anaerobic digester, which helps to power several farm areas on the southern end of campus, goes through thousands of tons of waste every year and MSU only contributes a fraction of what it processes

The Campus Sustainabilty Officer told the reporter,

It felt really good though. It’s one of those things of sustainability where you have this horrible situation and, because of the technology we have and the driven people we have at MSU, we have the ability to turn it into something good.

While the outcome was a positive one, plenty of people had jokes when the story was shared on social media.

The phrase "gallons of mayonnaise" makes me much more uncomfortable than was expected.

Condiments 101: All Spartan freshman are required to attend. Bring your own mayonnaise.

Given how good it appears to be at making energy, maybe the dish should be called "COAL-SLAW" instead!

So should you ever find yourself with more than 1000 gallons of bad mayo, get yourself to East Lansing. They know what to do.