The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Building & Grounds blog recently posted an interesting story about sustainable dining initiatives at Colby College. The post focuses on the sustainability efforts made as part of a recent renovation of one of Colby’s dining halls, including the use of computer-controlled ventilation equipment that runs only when it’s needed, recycled content carpet, durable furniture, and dishwashers with sensors that turn them off when there are no dishes to be washed.

I know students can be pretty wasteful, but I was still shocked to learn that only 10% the 80 tons of food waste collected for compost each year at Colby is from food preparation. The other 90% is food that students take but don’t eat. That means the students are producing nine times more food waste than the kitchen staff! The post goes on to describe some neat steps Colby is taking to reduce food waste – like preparing food on demand (where possible) and using heavier plates and smaller trays to discourage students from taking more than they can eat – that other institutions might also be able to implement. It will be great to see how effective these steps prove to be at reducing Colby’s food waste. Anyway, I’m curious if Colby’s ratio of pre-consumer to post-consumer food waste is pretty similar to the ratio at other schools that do both pre and post consumer composting. Let us know in the comments if you have any information!

The most intriguing part of the post for me was the following:

“Unlike some other college dining operations that buy directly from local farmers, Mr. Klaus — who spends about $1-million a year on food purchases — says he prefers to work with his big commercial suppliers to encourage them to buy more of their food locally. He does this, he says, because he doesn’t want a menu change at the college to threaten an individual farmer’s livelihood, and he doesn’t want a farmer’s having had good weekend sales at a local farmer’s market to mean he can’t get tomatoes for Colby’s students.”

I often hear folks talking about the importance of establishing direct relationships with farmers and avoiding the middleman, so it’s interesting to hear a different perspective. There seem to be some educational benefits that can come with direct purchasing that purchasing from a distributor can’t match – like the opportunity for students to visit or even work on the farm – but I can see where Mr. Klaus is coming from. How are others addressing this issue? Please share your experiences and thoughts in the comments section.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Dining Services, Julian Dautremont-Smith, Recycling & Waste Min.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.