Fall 2014 PHE-FRC Campus Updates

Food waste collection continues to go well at Franklin and Marshall at the dining hall and beyond. Several recent events catered by Sodexo away from the dining hall gave us the opportunity to expand our  food waste collection to other on-campus sites. We also collected non-food materials from our greenhouses to be composted. Finally, several student groups have inquired about composting food waste from their events and venues and we are working out the logistics with them.

Two weeks ago a few members of the FRN team at Lycoming College had some volunteers attend a Thanksgiving dinner we planned with our partner agency. The FRN volunteers served dinner, did dishes and cleaned tables for the men and workers at American Rescue Workers for a nice holiday gift. Volunteers got a great experience out of it and the men at the shelter loved our company and enjoyed sharing stories with us. This was a great experience to get people together for the holidays and show the volunteers who we help behind closed doors. We have made it up to 12,670.45 pounds and we are continuing to recover during finals.

It is December, so we have had a few weather related challenges. We had a week when the roads were not safe for driving, so no food went to Erie City Mission. We have had a few incidences where we had food for delivery, but our students just didn't show up. Overall, though, the daily transportation of food has been going well.

Composting is moving along fairly well. Again, a few days when the bins haven't been in place due to weather, but overall we are moving forward.

The Westminster Susatinability Commitee continues to develop a plan for on campus composting.

1. Plan to start with just pre-consumer waste from dining along with campus grounds vegitation.

2. Have identified location.

3. In the process of developing a budget:

- Start up costs.

- Operating cost.

4. Will then present proposal to administration

At Shippensburg we are continuing to work on Food Donations via the Food Recovery Network.  Currently Nick Iula and myself are contacting some possible local people that might be able to help us expand the composting that we are able to do on campus.   We have also recently re-focused our efforts on a Chartwells program called Carbon Foodprint that helps us re-manage our daily operations and menu planning.

We continue to compost in our Student Restaurant and Retail operations.

We have a new contractor for waste hauling and are working with them as we have moved to a bio bin to capture compostable materials with the goal of them hauling it off site to a commercial compost operation. Our recycling and food donations continue this semester.

The last week of September our Office of Sustainability hosted "sustainability week" which involved many student groups showcasing their initiatives on campus. As part of the activities we did a local foods dinner in our student restaurant featuring products from Lancaster County and produce from our Organic Garden here on campus. 

We opened the school year by serving significantly more meals in resident dining than previous year. Despite this our composting/waste numbers remain nuetral. A focus has been placed in training new employees and students on composting practices. Other potential areas to add to the initaitive are being discussed presently.

After several months of transitioning the program to new Dining Services management members it has finally found a lead person to head all campus dining sustainability.  Now that we have that finally taken care of we are still working through ensuring all campus dining waste reduction programs are in place with a due date of October 31, 2014.

These programs include Trim Trax aimed at reducing food waste in the kitchen through over production, prep and out of date goods.  Project Clean Plate which focuses on waste reduction in the dining hall. 

We are also researching the possibility of working with a local composting facility that was recently identified.  At this time the amount of food scraps we can compost is minimal with the identification of a composting facility we can increase our campus dining composting and get all three major dining halls involved. 

In Septemebr we donated 150 lb.s of food to Seven Loaves food program, we also digested over 1400 lbs. of food with the ORCA program keeping the food away from the landfill. We recruited several new students to help with the food donations as they need to have community involvement.

We've been working with Lean Path, and it has helped us reduce our food waste. Staff are much more conscientious about using leftovers, even if the leftovers came from a different serving line. Staff are doing a much better job at watching their trim waste.

We had some success with composting coffee grinds in the spring, but since the student in charge has left we have not found a new student to take over.