Department ofDining & Culinary Services

We compost all food waste, paper cups, straws, napkins, sugar packets, basket liners, paper cartons, wood stir sticks, tea bags and wrappers.

As of April 2008, Dining & Culinary Services composted 74,670 gallons of food waste from our kitchen.

Goal:  Our goal is to reduce the amount of waste that is taken to the landfill. 

Impact: Our staff and students separate food scraps from recycling and trash.  Not only does this help the dish room staff, but it makes all participants proactive in minimizing our footprint on the earth.  Our customers only need to pull the recyclables off the tray to do their part.

Results:  In an effort to minimize our footprint on the earth, we have worked on better practices in composting and trash disposal.
September 2006-February 2007—We did not compost and we sent 135,040 lbs of trash to the local landfill.
September 2007-February 2008—We composted 55,575 gallons of food waste and sent 42,380 lbs of trash to the landfill.
Through prudence, determination and research, we have reduced the waste sent to the landfill by an astounding 68.62%.

Or, put another way, the garbage-truck size trash compactor that sits on the U.C. loading dock used to be emptied once a week. Now, it's emptied about five times a year.