Waste Reduction
New for spring 2024! SBU Eats is committed to reducing our environmental footprint which is why we have switched to new ecofriendly containers at Roth Food Court and SAC Food Court! The black plastic bowls with the clear lid have now been replaced with new Ecopax to-go containers that are made with 40% natural materials, are microwave safe and grease resistant. This durable eco-friendly to-go container employs innovations in green manufacturing such as the use of earth minerals to reduce the amount of plastic materials needed.
In the U.S., we send 40% of all of the food we produce to landfills. Some people might dismiss this as naturally biodegradable. But in a landfill, the food degradation process forms methane, a greenhouse gas that’s around 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide! The economic impact is shocking, too. According to the EPA, our nation now spends an estimated $1 billion every year to dispose of excess food. By reducing this waste, we reduce the costs and carbon footprint of disposal as well as on the front end, where you have to factor in the energy to processing, packaging and delivery of the food in the first place.
SBU Eat’s efforts include working with our culinary teams and suppliers to reduce food waste in our ordering, storage, preparation and serving across campus. On campus, we employ the Waste Not 2.0 program to minimize waste in our kitchens through training, tracking, and weighing.
Waste Not™ 2.0 is Compass Group’s proprietary, tablet-based, waste-tracking program designed to change behavior with real-time tracking and dashboard reporting. The SBU Eats team uses this tool to track the amount of food waste produced within our dining locations. The dynamic data analytics enables us to see where most of the waste comes from and why so that we can be more efficient in our processes to develop strategies to prevent overproduction and reduce the amount of unused inventory to divert food waste from the landfills.
Each of our kitchens on campus has a Waste Not 2.0 tablet which enables our team members to categorize the different types of waste and where the waste is going. Once the data has been entered, we are able to see our Waste Impact calculations for total waste, water footprint and carbon footprint on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The goal of this platform is to have an easy, functional way to track waste and create an environment that values being more sustainable and composting food into a reusable resource.