Spring/Summer 2015 PHE-FRC Campus Updates

We are closing out the 2014 - 2015 school year over the next few weeks.  This school year our main focus was better utilization of our current food waste reduction programs as well as consistent tracking of information.  Moving into the summer we will have more compost than we have had over the last few months but programs like Food Recovery Network will stop until August. 

Over the summer we will be updating our Carbon Foodprint tracking program which measures the amount of carbon emissions we make based on food purchasing patterns (beef vs. more sustainable proteins, local purchases, etc), waste, etc.  We are also looking into increasing our composting efforts on campus by working with an area composting facility.  Trim Trax our back of house consumer waste program will also see new implementation coming into the Fall.  Our efforts are to work carefully over the next few months to expand our current program and develop new programs that will allow for "tighter" food waste reduction.

In the month of March Keystone donated 100 lb.s of food and prevented 3,877 lb.s of food from going into the local landfill with the ORCA food digestor program. The Orca program has changed the student culture as they are wasting less food as a direct result of the program. 

Spring semester has just begun this past week and we continue to focus on composting pre and post consumer food waste.  We have added a bio-bin last semester provided by Sustainable Waste Solutions, Souderton, PA. They have added a tipper for lifting and dumping the totes that collect the food waste from our pulper.  They are currently working with a new off site composting facility which will accept our pulped waste.

Additionally, we continue to focus on Recycling in all of our operations as well as our food donation program lead by a student organization.

Food Waste collection continues to go well at Franklin and Marshall. The trend has been that we are capturing more food waste than last year, averaging about 8 tons when school is in session. The bulk of the waste is from pre- and post-consumer sources at the Dining Hall, but we also collect at some weekly and occasional events as well as some satellite areas. We are also looking at options for capturing food waste in Sodexo's retail food sales sites on campus. The food waste collection has been a major factor in the significant drop in trash weights that we have realized.