Throughout the years, University of Georgia Dining Services has catered to thousands of students. However, during the pandemic, the amount of food wastage shifted due to students throwing away uneaten food in single-use containers.
Food waste can have serious environmental repercussions. Wasting food also wastes land, water and labor resources that went into preparing and transporting the food. Disposable dishes, such as paper plates and plasticware, also fill up landfills and use precious resources.
College campuses are part of the problem, too. According to NPR, colleges throw out around 22 million pounds of uneaten food every year.
According to Greg Trevor, associate vice president for Marketing & Communications at UGA, in order to limit the amount of food wastage, UGA Dining Services utilizes a food inventory system, allowing them to track and predict the amount of food that will need to be made. Recently, several initiatives were started to both increase sustainable practices and reduce food waste.
“In the mid-'90s, UGA Dining Services installed their first pulper system. A pulper grinds food waste into a pulp-like consistency and then extracts water so that the volume of waste going to the landfills and/or water treatment facilities is significantly reduced,” Trevor said.
During the past few years, UGA Dining Services’ efforts to reduce food wastage have become a top priority. With their partnership with the UGA Office of Sustainability and UGA Facilities Management Division, the dining halls reduced both food and water wastage through conservation efforts.
The dining halls continued to create a method that would make best usage of the excess food. By March 2014, the dining commons on main campus started composting all of their food waste.
“Once food waste from the dining commons has been pulped, it is sent to UGA’s Bioconversion Center where it is combined with landscape 'leaf and limb' debris and animal bedding from the UGA campus,” Trevor said.
During this time, dining services removed all non-compostable items from the dining halls, which allowed 100% of food waste to be composted by switching from non-biodegradable products like individual condiment packets to with bulk condiment dispensers.
In 2015, all of the dining halls converted from trays to reusable plates and utensils. Due to trayless food service, the amount of food discarded on a daily basis greatly decreased.
Thanks to trayless dining, 107,142 pounds of food is saved per semester across all dining commons.
Along with the efforts of the pulper system and composting, the dining halls work with organizations such as Full Plate, a program run through ACTION Inc. that donates food, to distribute the prepared food to local charities, shelters and food pantries. In 2019, UGA Dining Services donated 10,117.5 pounds of food to Full Plate.
With the start of the fall 2021 semester, the dining halls hope to once again decrease the amount of food that goes to waste by converting to reusable plates and silverware.
