GREENTREEGAZETTE - ARAMARK Higher Education

As seen in May/June 2009 

the 

GreentreeGazette 

copyright 2009 The Greentree Gazette


the 


copyright 2009 The Greentree Gazette 

The 

food 

fight for 

zero 

waste 

b y T o m R o b i n s o n 

If you remember the iconic food fight at Faber College in the 

movie “Animal House,” you’ll appreciate how much different campus 

dining services are today. The oh-so-gross Blutarski (played by John 

Belushi) has been replaced by the oh-so-green student sustainability 

coordinator. And most everything in the dining hall has changed as well. 

It’s a serious attempt to produce zero student kvetching as well as zero 

waste. Zero kvetching is self-explanatory if you know some Yiddish. Zero waste 

means all dining materials are recycled back into nature or the marketplace in a 

manner that protects human health and the environment. 

On many campuses, what you eat, where it comes from, where the uneaten 

leftovers and kitchen waste go, and even the business model have become a 

sophisticated enterprise. The new breed of University Dining Services (UDSs) 

is a closed-loop system that would make any tree-hugger or thrifty CFO happy. 

For colleges and universities that contract with a service to manage their 

dining services, ARAMARK and Sodexo are the two largest in the U.S. The 

U. K.’s Compass Group operates in the U.S. as well, under several brand names 

including Bon Appetit and Chartwells. 

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apples, organic granola, ice cream, and 

several varieties of cheeses from local 

purveyors. 

• Served fair trade coffee in all dining 

halls from Dean’s Beans in Orange, 

Massachusetts. 

More and more students are eschewing 

burgers and fries for more fruits and vegetables, organics and 

locally produced foods. 

Food in 

Many students are really and truly 

seeking out healthier alternatives to 

burgers and pizza. They are eating 

more fresh produce, more fruits and 

vegetables and leaner cuts of meat with 

less sauces. They are avoiding hormones 

and antibiotics. 

The student preference for more 

fresh and organic offerings is often 

accomplished by buying from local 

producers. Williams College, for instance: 

• Spent 20 cents per meal to increase 

consumption of local and organic 

food by 30%. 

Locally sourced produce at the University of Florida dining services. 

• Hired a student summer intern to 

research and connect with sustainable 

food producers in the Berkshires. 

• Replaced all conventional milk with 

milk from the grass-fed, hormonefree 

cows of Highlawn Farm in Lee, 

Massachusetts. 

• Offered local, grass-fed beef 

hamburgers nightly at Dodd House 

and Mission Park. 

• Purchased most summer vegetables 

and much of its winter storage 

vegetables from a 60-acre family farm 

located 10 minutes from the college. 

• Purchased organic shiitake 

mushrooms, organic honey, low-spray 

Tray-less 

More than 250 ARAMARK campus 

partners have removed trays from their 

residential dining locations to reduce 

food waste and conserve water and 

energy. ARAMARK experienced a food 

waste reduction of 25 to 30 percent 

per person after trays were removed. 

Armed with a plate instead of a tray, 

people don’t—can’t—pile on as much 

grub. Meanwhile, the water and energy 

required to wash trays is eliminated. 

Biodegradable packaging 

While plastic knives and forks are 

convenient and Styrofoam plates and 

cups keep food at the correct temperature, 

they cause ecological nightmares. 

The University of Minnesota has 

con verted 35 percent of packaging to 

biodegradable (for example, cornstarch or 

cellulose) in campus dining locations. A 24oz 

fountain cup made of corn resin or starch 

breaks down nicely in compost piles within 

45 days. Minnesota’s Green Team (student 

sustainability interns) help customers 

compost their food waste and biodegradable 

packaging in dining locations. 

Vending 

As chips and candy bars give way to fresh 

fruit and low-fat alternatives, the vending 

machines are also becoming more ecofriendly. 

Smart metering and controls 

turn off lights during slow periods. LED 

lighting reduces energy consumption. 

PepsiCo now has vending machines 

that emit 12 percent less greenhouse 

gas and use carbon dioxide, a 

natural refrigerant, instead of hydrofluorocarbons. 

The comp any is also 

eliminating HFCs from the insulating 

foam in vending machines, coolers and 

fountain equipment. 

Food out 

In an ideal closed-loop system, food is 

delivered, prepared, served and completely 

eaten. That is “food in.” However, not every 

pound finds its way into tummies. How do 

college dining services deal with the waste? 

That is “food out.” 

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The University of South Carolina has created a network of regional suppliers. 

U C Davis has introduced utensils that biodegrade 

in landfills in 45 days. 

According to the U.S. Environmental 

Protection Agency, food waste is the 

least recycled material in the United 

States. Studies by the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture have shown that every year, 

Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of 

food—3,044 pounds of food per second! 

Campus dining services have become 

very aggressive and quite efficient in 

reducing waste. 

Berea College Farm composts waste for fertilizer, recycles 

manure from its own livestock and produces USDA Certified 

Organic vegetables, culinary herbs, tree fruits, berries, mushrooms, 

and grains. 

Composting and decomposition 

Organic waste has intrinsic value and can 

be reused in numerous ways. 

The University of Vermont and 

the Intervale Compost Project work 

together to reduce the waste that 

enters landfills. Their methods employ 

traditional composting. Pre- and postconsumer 

food scraps are collected from 

several campus dining locations each 

day, then transported for composting to 

the Invervale facility, less than a 

mile from campus. Food waste 

is layered with other organic 

waste. The resulting compost 

is then sold to garden centers, 

farms, nurseries and landscapers. 

Completing the circle, UVM’s 

dining services buys produce 

grown using this same compost. 

Instead of heading for the 

landfill, the kitchen scraps from 

The College of Southern Idaho’s 

dining hall now become worm 

food or valuable compost, thanks 

to a new partnership between 

the CSI Agriculture Department’s horticulture 

program and CSI Dining Services, 

operated by ARAMARK. Many schools 

compost on campus and use the nutrients 

to fertilize college farms, student gardens 

or campus landscaping. 

A firm named BioHitech America 

manu factures organic waste decomposition 

systems in which refined microorgan 

isms transform organic waste into 

a liquid that can be safely sent down the 

drain as treatable wastewater. Within 

24 hours the decomposition system 



the 



UF’s award-winning program has recovered and recycled 

over 200 million pounds of materials since 1989. 

will liquify meat, poultry, fish, fruit, 

vegetables, rice, pasta, bread, noodles, 

grains, coffee, egg shells and dairy 

products. There’s nothing to haul away, 

so no vehicle fuel burned. 

Minnesota’s student Green Team volunteers to help educate other students about recycling and composting. 

Operating a BioHitech machine at full 

capacity for 1 year: 

• Reduces greenhouse gases equivalent 

to taking 40 cars off the road 

• Saves 1,200 gallons of diesel fuel 

• Reduces carbon dioxide by 470,000 

pounds—equivalent to about 100 

trees 

• Returns tens of thousands of gallons 

of water a year to the ecosystem 

Used fryer oil has advanced from 

the greasy bane of fast food kitchens 

to the darling of biofuel production. 

Many campuses run their bus fleets on a 

blend of 10 percent recycled oil and 90 

percent diesel. Some more sophisticated 

engines run on 100 percent true biofuel 

from non-petroleum sources. Fryer oil is 

now so valuable a commodity that “oil 

pirates” have been known to steal what 

once couldn’t be given away. 

Biodegradable packaging 

To reduce non-food waste, students 

at colleges like Baylor University, the 

University of North Carolina Chapel 

Hill, Salem College and University of 

Florida are piloting reusable plastic “togo” 

containers in their dining halls. They 

can be sanitized at temperatures reaching 

180 degrees and reused, cutting down 

Western Illinois University students ratchet up campus RecycleMania efforts with grassroots marketing 

and student-produced PSAs. 

overall container consumption. 

In the dining halls at the University 

of Minnesota, Twin Cities about 35 

percent of the packaging in use is now 

biodegradable. Packaging such as the 

24oz fountain cup, salad bowls and 

plates are made of corn resin or starch 

and take approximately 45 days to break 

down in compost piles. 

Good eats. Good business. 

Good deeds. 

Recycling and decomposing saves money 

as it helps save the environment. The costs 

of collecting and hauling as well as landfill 

dumping fees are expensive. Reworking 

organic waste on campus eliminates many 

such expenses. Some schools even produce 

revenue from selling waste to third parties. 

There are social benefits as well. The 

“buy local” movement has spawned 

Community Supported Agriculture 

whereby local farmers and processors sell 

to local restaurants and institutions. The 

local economy benefits, while carbon 

emissions and costs associated with 

transport are greatly reduced. 

Perfection—easier said than done 

In her sustainability zeal, Amanda 

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Ambramson, a student at Keene State 

College, took on the college’s dining service 

contractor Sodexo for not doing enough 

local sourcing and for importing Mexican 

out-of-season vegetables. How ever, she discovered 

that nothing is simple. “Students, 

even good-hearted ones, want tomatoes 

in January,” she says. The UDS contractor 

must cater to the tastes of all students to 

assure a contract renewal. 

At larger institutions coordinating 

dozens of small farmers may not be 

possible. When crossing state lines, 

animal proteins (meat, poultry, eggs, 

etc.) from small producers must be 

inspected by a USDA facility or onsite. 

For many small producers, that’s 

impractical and expensive. Dining 

service contractors want small farmers to 

deal with the existing wholesale, storage 

and transportation system. 

It is a reality that lamb imported from 

Australia on a massive scale can be less 

expensive and more efficient than local 

sources, despite the many ‘food miles.’ 

Amanda now says she wants to work for 

a dining contractor upon graduation to 

negotiate the balance between sustainability 

and marketability. 

While the payout for composting and 

Food scraps are mixed with water in this decomposter, manufactured by BioHitech, and converted to a 

harmless effluent that is returned to the ecosystem. 

decomposition is attractive, not every 

capital budget can handle the upfront costs. 

“Working with the latest Campus 

Carbon Calculator, we and our campus 

partners will all better understand the 

environmental impact of our food 

choices, and make both personal and 

environmentally responsible decisions 

about the foods we choose,” says Chris 

Stemen, senior director of sustainability 

at ARAMARK Higher Education. 

By 2010, ARAMARK plans to 

implement energy and water conservation 

measures at every partner campus. It will 

only purchase paper products made with 

recycled content; utilize green cleaning 

products at all locations; divert 100 

percent of fryer oil waste; and increase 

the level of sustainable food offerings 

Favorite dining hall foods in 2009 

1. Locally-grown fruits and veggies 

2. Crispy garlic-ginger chicken wings 

3. Mac ’n five cheeses 

4. Vietnamese Pho 

5. Green tea and pomegranate smoothies 

6. Crab cake sliders 

7. Mini samosas 

8. Tilapia Veracruz 

9. Goat cheese salad 

10. Chicken Molé 

served by at least five percent per year. 

Arlin Wasserman, vice president 

of corporate citizenship at Sodexo, 

offers that the ultimate solution is not 

“tinkering with marginal benefits of 

handling organic wastes in the current 

food system, but reinventing the process 

to eliminate them.” Don’t produce so 

much waste. Donate unserved food to 

food banks. Plan menus that eliminate 

unused ingredients. Wasserman goes on 

to say, “Even products made from ecofriendly 

materials like cornstarch and 

bamboo are not as good as washables 

and reusable containers.” 

Zero waste and 100 percent student 

happiness may be unattainable goals, but 

on a growing number of campuses they are 

worth the fight. n 

Student tastebuds over two decades 

Sodexo provides food services to more than 800 colleges in the U.S. and Canada, 

and they’ve just released some taste preference data from student dining halls. 

Favorite dining hall foods in 1989 

1. Fruit and cottage cheese plate 

2. Chicken nuggets 

3. Turkey Tetrazini 

4. Chicken Chop Suey 

5. Egg, bacon and cheese English muffin 

6. Half sandwich and cup of soup 

7. Taco bar 

8. Spanish beef and rice 

9. Vegetarian bean chili 

10. Algerian lamb stew

GREENTREEGAZETTE - ARAMARK Higher Education

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