At Boston University, students are always studying—and they’re always eating.
Between five on-campus dining halls, twenty-eight restaurant and retail establishments (yes,
including City Co), and even its own catering operation,
BU Dining prepares a lot of food. And unfortunately, not all of it gets eaten.
So there are thousands of pounds of food waste that are generated each week on campus.
Whether it's post-consumer from people's plates, or pre-consumer
waste from trim or overproduction, or a handful of other reasons as well.
So where do all those onion skins, pizza crusts,
and unfinished waffles end up? The answer might surprise you…
Around the world, some 37% of human-produced trash still ends up in landfills,
where food waste generates not only carbon dioxide, but also methane, which is 28 times
more powerful than CO2 at warming the planet. According to the USDA, as much as 40% of food
produced in the United States is left eaten. That’s 133 billion pounds of food… wasted.
In regards to the environment, I’m definitely more conscious about like where normal waste
like cardboard or like recyclables go, but in terms of food waste, um, no.
Umm, no, I haven’t thought about where my food waste goes.
I do think about where my food goes all the time.
I actually—I don’t think about where my food goes,
because I try just not to waste it in the first place.
I always try to finish my food. Anything I get I always try and finish.
Unless it’s bad. I would throw it away.
To help keep Boston University’s carbon footprint as small as possible,
BU has a number of ways to deal with campus waste. According to Lexie Rakcza,
director of sustainability at BU Dining, the first step in addressing food waste is prevention.
Currently we really focus on reducing waste as much as possible,
through things like knife skills training, cooking in small batches and to order,
and using LeanPath to track and manage our food waste.
But these efforts to prevent waste can only go so far. So to keep
those apple cores and half finished sandwiches ending up in a landfill,
BU employs a four-tiered strategy for dealing with campus food waste.
The first strategy? Repurposing.
So when we work to prevent food waste,
one of the things we do is look to see if we can repurpose ingredients.
So if we are cutting vegetables for a menu item, there might be a part of the vegetable that that
recipe doesn't call for, but we can utilize it for another menu item. A great example of this
is Chef Alvin's chicken croquettes. Those utilize a part of the chicken that other menu items may
not use. But we're able to take that part of the chicken that is trimmed off for another
recipe and turn it into croquettes, which are a very popular menu item now across campus.
Another way to repurpose uneaten food is to donate it to those in need. For example,
between all those dining halls, restaurants, retail locations, and catered events,
sometimes there is perfectly good, unserved food left over at the end of the day.
In those instances, we work with a few different local organizations, Food for Free, Rosie's Place,
and BU Student Food Rescue program to recover surplus food and donate it to folks in need.
Most of BU’s food waste that can’t be repurposed or donated is composted. Food waste designated for
composting is collected by a local minority- and women-owned worker co-op and sent to a
farm in the Boston area, where—despite its unappetizing appearance—it can actually help
improve the quality of the soil. That way, BU’s leftovers actually help grow tomorrow’s crops.
Instead of composting, some of BU’s food waste is destined for a process called
anaerobic digestion. If you’re picturing a giant stomach, that’s not far off. First,
the food waste is processed into a slurry, which is collected in tanks like these in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, where complex communities of microorganisms break everything down,
similar to the bacteria in your gut. The resulting solid, liquid,
and gas biproducts will be turned into usable resources like renewable energy, or fertilizer.
With all of these steps, we are able to manage our food waste in a sustainable way. However,
there's always things that can be done to improve upon our environmental impact and lessen it,
especially regarding prevention. The majority of food waste generated on campus comes from
people's plates. So we really need the entire university to be engaged in our efforts.
Imagine the impact that we can have if everybody takes steps
to help minimize waste and minimize our impact.