News

March 20, 2009

University of Connecticut Nurturing Next Crop of Conservationists

“College foodservice is one of the best-kept secrets known to man. It’s a really neat business,” says Dennis Pierce, director of dining services for the University of Connecticut. One reason for Pierce’s job satisfaction is his university’s environmental efforts. For example, Pierce is shopping for a system that turns food waste into a fertile topsoil. He expects the compost to be available to the school’s groundskeepers -- and its retail operations, for sale to gardening enthusiasts -- sometime this summer.

By that time, the 10 new campus beehives will likely be buzzing, supplementing the 10 that generated 280 pounds of honey for school dining rooms last season. A student-run garden—fertilized in part with vegetable refuse from Pierce’s kitchens—will be in full swing, supplying vegetables for the eight dining facilities in his charge.

There’ll be enough of a track record to pinpoint how much water the school is conserving from its decision to stop using cafeteria trays. It also might have a count of how many paper coffee cups were taken out of the waste stream by the give-away of reusable containers to half the 9,000 students who participate in a meal plan.

Addressing the concerns of green-minded students and indulging an acknowledged curiosity in “the really neat ideas out there,” have enabled Pierce and UConn to engage the conservation enthusiasts to a degree noticed by others in foodservice. Although many are eying such first steps as changing out their light bulbs and wondering how to inform patrons without being accused of self-promotional “greenmailing,” UConn is pursuing such advanced efforts as composting and raising its own supplies, often with the involvement of constituents.

Quantifying the purely financial payback of green efforts is sometimes difficult because other parties are involved, says Pierce. For instance, whatever compost is produced in the pulp-and-bake system he plans to install kitchen-side will be given rather than sold to the university’s landscapers. They’ll realize whatever savings is there.

The setup’s real financial benefit will be its impact on hauling fees, Pierce says. A “pulper” at the dish station where plates are scraped will remove 80 percent of the water from the waste, leaving it in a pulverized form that can be channeled to what Pierce describes as two bins lined with heating elements. A churning component mixes the contents as it bakes for 12 hours. What’s left, he says, is what looks and smells like rich spring soil.

The labor requirement is minimal since so much of the operation is automated. “The labor comes with having to put the material that’s left into another bin or container,” notes Pierce.

He says he learned of the technology during the 2008 NRA Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, held annually in May at Chicago’s McCormick Place. The cost, he indicates, is not insignificant. The bins alone may cost in the neighborhood of $60,000 each, although he’s not yet fielded responses to his request for proposals.

Meanwhile, there are other green efforts to undertake. Once a semester, the dining program hosts a meal prepared exclusively from locally grown ingredients. The farmers are invited to the event to converse with students and answer their questions.

Menus are drafted to incorporate what’s grown in the student garden. “It’s enough to be significant,” he says. “I have eight dining rooms and you can pull enough lettuce to supply one of them. Not every day, of course, but it helps.”

And then there are the bees. All 10 of the hives that were set up last year apparently survived the winter, hardly a given in a climate like New Haven’s, Pierce says. The honey provided by those and the 10 new colonies will provide sweeteners for the dining operations and also may be sold in on-campus convenience stores.

The school is now investigating whether it can make its own maple syrup by tapping trees on the grounds.

The administration plans to compost materials like grass cuttings once it gets approval to build a cement-bottomed bed. The site apparently has to be located away from neighbors or residences because of concerns about smells. “Later on, we will probably start to introduce food waste,” says Pierce. Right now, some vegetable refuse is given to students to compost for their garden.

During early February 2009, the school enacted its plan to eliminate paper coffee cups. The foodservice department gave out 4,500 containers, reusable for hot or cold drinks and emblazoned with the slogan, “Fill me up and save a cup.” The effort grew out of an earlier initiative to diminish how many water bottles end up in the trash.

UConn was an early convert to tray-less dining, quickly following the lead of schools like Middlebury College in asking students to carry plates and glasses in their hands. The switch has been a huge water saver, since no trays have to be washed, Pierce has said. However, Pierce does acknowledge one downside: After a snowfall, the students have no trays to use for sledding.