DINING GREEN
DINING GREEN
Sustainable Dining
Waste Reduction Strategie
To minimize our landfill waste, we are plastic straw-free and use reusable plates, cups, and utensils. By eliminating trays in our dining halls, we reduce water and food waste and conserve energy. We offer small plates and trayless dining to encourage students to take smaller portions, reminding them they can always go back for seconds if they are still hungry.
LeanPath
We reduce our pre-consumer waste back of house by using technology like LeanPath to guide dining managers on ways to waste less. The tool measures and reduces kitchen food waste. It includes a scale with a camera that weighs food that was “wasted” and documents the reason why to improve operations.
For example, dining staff will use LeanPath to weigh a cantaloupe’s peel waste and compare it to the optimal weight of a cantaloupe’s peel. If their peel is heavier than the optimal amount, dining staff will be recommended to cut closer to the peel to ensure more fruit gets served rather than thrown away. As another example, if pastries on the dining floor expire, the LeanPath system will recommend putting fewer pastries out each day since they are going bad before they have a chance to be eaten.
RaccoonEyes
RaccoonEyes collects and analyzes post-consumer food waste data, providing us insight to further reduce food waste. Since implementation, we have reduced food waste 23% per plate and seen a 17% increase in consumer satisfaction. In the Spring 2024 semester, the top wasted food was chicken, weighing a total of 2,356 lbs across 10,058 plates. We are using this data to adjust portion sizes, change serving approaches, and add signage to encourage students to take only what they can eat.
Waste Diversion
Cardboard
GSU recycles cardboard boxes from the dining hall kitchens. About 53.95 tons of cardboard are collected each year from the Piedmont North and Central kitchens.
Cooking Oil Biofuel
Our fats, oils, and greases from back-of-house operations are collected and converted into biofuel. Biofuel is a clean-burning, renewable substitute for petroleum diesel. We collect about 24.42 tons of cooking oil to be converted into biofuel every year
Composting
GSU Food & Dining has partnered with Closed Loop Organics to compost about 357.84 tons of food waste per year in the dining halls, including our bones and biodegradable napkins. We don’t have any trashcans on the dining room floors to ensure all post-consumer food waste is composted. The food waste from the kitchens is also composted, diverting over 100 tons of food waste from traditional disposal methods each year.
Students put plates with their waste on our conveyor belt, where it goes to the dishwashers who sort the waste into different bins for our SOMAT grinder. The SOMAT system will dispose of, extract, and pulp pre-consumer and post-consumer waste into a confetti-like mixture, removing the water from the waste. This condensed mixture allows for a more efficient composting system by allowing more compost to be transported in fewer trips. This reduces the amount of methane formed in the compost and reduces transportation emissions, overall lowering our environmental impact. This system saves over 100 tons of non-donatable food waste yearly from entering landfills.
If students want to compost, any food returned in the blue OZZI containers gets composted by our dishwashing staff.
Food Recovery
Georgia State University actively supports food rescue efforts through its Pantry Plates program, which plays a crucial role in providing nutritious meals to the Panther’s Pantry. This initiative is part of a broader commitment to reducing food waste and addressing food insecurity within the Georgia State community.
The Pantry Plates program works by recovering surplus food from Georgia State’s Panther Dining facilities. Rather than letting this excess food go to waste, it is carefully collected and repurposed. The rescued food is then prepared and portioned into single-serve microwavable trays, ensuring that each meal is both convenient and balanced. These meals are vacuum-sealed to preserve freshness and quality.
Once prepared, the meals are distributed to the Georgia State community through Panther’s Pantry, making them accessible to students, staff, and faculty who may be experiencing food insecurity. By utilizing recovered food in this way, the program not only helps those in need, but also contributes to a more sustainable and responsible approach to food management on campus.
In FY 2024, we collected and donated 505.45 lbs of food.
Compostable and Reusable Container
Reusable containers prevent thousands of pounds of trash annually, tens of thousands of gallons of water-use annually, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 77%.
We don’t provide styrofoam for takeout meals. Instead, we provide 100% recyclable OZZI containers to students. Students take their food to-go in the OZZI containers and bring them back to swap out. Our dining staff cleans them and gives them to other meal-plan-holding students who want to do takeout.
Patrons who are not on a meal plan can still purchase compostable to-go containers.
Fill it Forward
Each OZZI container is labeled with a sticker by Fill It Forward that measures and incentivizes users to return them. Fill It Forward tracks the number of times a container was returned and donates $0.02 to a charity every time a container is returned. Charities include senior meals, access to clean water, and hygiene in India.
Freight Farm
Georgia State University has a freight farm located behind Piedmont North. The “Leafy Green Machine” is a hydroponic farm inside a shipping container. It grows crops such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, and herbs that go straight to our dining halls, catering, and Panther’s Pantry. It produces greens year-round.
Hydroponic farming produces less water waste, requires less space than industrial farming, and doesn’t require soil, pesticides, or herbicides. Approximately 225 lbs of greens are produced by the Leafy Green Machine each year.
Partners
- PantherDining purchases regional produce and food products through GeorgiaGrown’s Athena Farms.
- Some items in the dining halls and cafes have ingredients sourced directly from our hydroponic Freight Farm on campus.
- All of our seafood is MSC-certified.
- We compost with Closed Loop Organics.
- Our reusable containers are from OZZI.
- We recycle our cooking oil through Clean Energy Biofuels.
- Our pre-consumer food waste is analyzed by LeanPath.
- Our post-consumer food waste is analyzed by RaccoonEyes.
Ideas for new partnerships? Contact GSU Sustainability Initiatives!
