Columbia University Dining

Tomatoes

All of the tomatoes served by Dining Services are provided by Thomas Colace Company, whose tomato vendors are all audited for Social Accountability. They check each grower for pay practices, as well as supplied living conditions. These farms are audited by independent companies to assure us that their standards are being met. The Thomas Colace Company was involved in getting the workers pay increases in conjunction with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Read more about this issue.

Trayless at John Jay

Along with many other college campuses across the United States, Columbia is now removing trays from the dining hall in an effort to decrease our environmental footprint and become more eco-friendly. Based on past plate-scraping events, dining hall users waste 190-450 lbs of food at every meal, just by taking too much food on their plates.

With the help of John Jay frequenters, Dining Services is able to save 3,000 gallons of water waste each day and at least 50 lbs of food waste at every meal that can be donated to City Harvest. All of these savings are able to happen just by removing trays and forcing diners to think before they make their food choices. So before you stock up on your favorite foods, just take it one plate at a time.

Update: View the impressive results of our first plate-scraping event after the trayless campaign was implemented in John Jay.

For more information about the trayless trend, please visit Time . Visit The New York Times for a related article, including a mention about Columbia University.

The College Sustainability Report Card

The Sustainable Endowments Institute releases its College Sustainability Report Card each year, which grades 300 leading colleges by looking at campus greening practices and endowment policies.

2009: Columbia ranked as one of the top Overall College Sustainability Leaders with an "A-," our best score to date. Dining Services received an "A" for our use of local, fair trade, and organic products on campus, our partnership with the student group LOAF (Local Organic Agriculture Friends), and our use of biodegradable take-away containers.

2008: Columbia received an overall score of a "B+," with Housing and Dining receiving an "A" for the implementation of Give and Go Green, our recycling efforts, and our integration of fair trade, local, and organic products on campus.

2007: Columbia's Report Card had an overall grade of a "B," with Housing and Dining receiving an "A" for our use of local, fair trade, and organic products on campus, our partnership with the student group LOAF (Local Organic Agriculture Friends), and our donations to City Harvest each week from the leftover food in John Jay Dining Hall.

Recycling

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: All our venues recycle paper, bottles, and cans through the Columbia recycling program. In addition, we have partnered with Green Forest, Inc ., a New York-based environmental consulting firm, to analyze the amount and type of waste coming out of our dining operations and develop a multi-pronged recycling plan.

Bottles & Cans
Dining recycles more than 1,000,000 bottles and cans per year. If stuffed into recyclable trash bags and laid out to form a pyramid, the pyramid’s base would be 2,500 feet across and rise to a point 50 feet high.

Cardboard
Dining recycles more than 150,000 cardboard boxes per year, which, stacked into a single pile, would rise 2 miles into the sky. If the boxes were laid end to end, they would create six avenues from the tip of the Bowery to the Bronx.

Oil
All of our used trans-fat-free cooking oil is now recycled. J + R Rendering picks up three 55-gallon drums bi-weekly. They use the oil in other manufacturing processes. We recycle about 4,000 gallons of this oil annually.

Paper Products
All the napkins we use are made completely from recycled materials. These products cost more but we believe the environmental benefit is worth it. We use about 6,600,000 napkins each year.

NEXT STEP: We are looking to add more recycled paper products in the near future.

Containers

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: In every dining venue, all in-house prepared food (salad, cut fruit, crudité, etc.) is sold in containers made of NatureWorks PLA, a 100% annually renewable resource: corn. This innovative product offers tremendous benefits as compared with traditional plastic packaging, which is derived from petroleum-based materials.

After their use, these corn containers break down in landfills in 45–60 days and are completely bio-degradable. By using NatureWorks PLA containers, we prevent 95,000 traditional plastic containers from ending up in landfills every year.

In the spring term 2006, we added cold beverage cups to our line of PLA containers. Yogurt parfaits, fresh squeezed orange juice, lemonade, and ice coffee are all served in these in our retail units.

NEXT STEP: We are in the process of researching bio-degradable take-out bags.

Paper Waste Reduction

In the Fall of 2007, Housing and Dining made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of paper used by our department. By replacing our copiers and printers and printing pages more conservatively, Housing and Dining was able to reduce our environmental footprint by 70% of what it was the year before. Keep up the good work!

Waste Prevention Program

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: The Waste Prevention Program was developed in conjunction with a student group, the Columbia Food Sustainability Project (CFSP), and our own C.R.O.W.N Nutrition Program. The project is now run by the Columbia University Eco-Reps.

Mission: The Waste Prevention Program’s mission is to empower our students to take the power into their own hands to prevent waste at John Jay Dining Hall.

What is waste?
Waste in John Jay Dining Hall includes:
• food waste: food that is served but not eaten
• trash waste: napkins and paper products
• liquid waste: beverages that are poured but not drunk

Benefits of less waste: By reducing waste we are able to make better use of leftovers (see Food Donations) and to provide better food to you. We have a fixed budget for food - with less waste there is more money available for festive meals and premium dinners, such as the peel-n-eat shrimp brunch and dinner that was held as a thank-you to students for reducing their waste in the dining hall on September 24, 2008.

Plate Scrapings:

Date	Patrons	Solid Waste	Liquid Waste	Paper Waste
April 9, 2009	928	150 pounds	25 quarts	15.75 pounds
March 26, 2009	1,096	167 pounds	59 quarts	15 pounds
March 9, 2009	1,038	217 pounds	16 quarts	31.5 pounds
September 22, 2008	925	127.5 pounds	52 pounds	Not Measured
November 14, 2007	969	192 pounds	128 pounds	10.25 pounds
February 15, 2006	1,000	320 pounds	32 gallons	79 pounds
October 5, 2005	1,000	450 pounds	30 gallons	100 pounds

Keep up the good work!

Food Donation

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: John Jay Dining Hall donates all un-served food to City Harvest, a non-profit with the mission to end hunger in New York City and the surrounding boroughs. They pick up prepared and perishable food from food service organizations and deliver it to food programs for those in need. They also collect and store non-perishable items for these programs, and individuals, to pick up.

Why City Harvest?

Local focus – 1.6 million New Yorkers currently live in poverty. City Harvest focuses on helping these people of the five boroughs of New York City. City Harvest is New York’s only food rescue organization. They state: “There is enough food in New York City for everyone to have what he or she needs. The challenge is distribution.”

Columbia University is particularly committed to supporting the Morningside Heights neighborhood; the following neighborhood agencies receive support and donations from City Harvest:

• Cluster House - Urban Pathways, 904 Amsterdam Avenue;
  
• Echo Apartments, 1050 Amsterdam Avenue;
  
• Praxis Housing Initiatives - Riverside Place 312 W. 109th Street;
  
• Broadway Community, 601 W. 114th Street;
  
• Cathedral Kitchen - St. John the Divine, 1045 Amsterdam Avenue;
  
• The Bridge, 248 W. 108th Street.

Helping diverse clientele – City Harvest serves people of all ages and walks of life who are in need.

Emphasis on Health & Education – City Harvest provides classes to teach how to eat healthfully on a limited food budget. They also have a Fruit Bowl Initiative, which provides a regular supply of fresh fruit to low-income children at day-care centers.

 

Partnerships – Industry-wide participation in the program with a variety of support from small bakeries donating goods to celebrity chefs throwing fund-raisers. They also partner with other non-profits to expand reach. For example, HarvestWorks, an agency that helps recover hundreds of thousands of pounds of unharvested local food. This effort ties directly with our Local Food Initiatives on campus.

Pride in Food Safety – From their refrigerated trucks to their inspection process, City Harvest takes food safety very seriously. In 25 years, they have never had a report of a food-borne illness due to their deliveries.

What we do?
Every Friday a staff member in John Jay Dining Hall gathers all the food for donation and puts it in the City Harvest-provided pans. This process takes about one hour. A call is placed to Dispatch and a driver comes by later in the afternoon. They are always on-time and reliable.Typically we donate about 300 pounds a week of starches, vegetables, and sometimes meat. Last year we donated a total of 10,796 pounds. Since we started working with City Harvest, we have donated a total of 90,668 pounds.

Student Participation– Our partnership with City Harvest is the cornerstone of our civic-minded activities. More importantly, it is also the foundation of our student-education effort – to edify for our students the value of food, their power to reduce waste, and what we as an organization do to help the community.This partnership works so effectively because it allows our students to be proactive, educated, conscientious consumers without taxing their already limited time. Professionals take care of the food and logistics, so the success of the program doesn’t rely solely on student participation. Instead the demand has always been on City Harvest to make the program work, and they have always risen to the appeal. However, for those students that wish to have a more active participation, City Harvest provides opportunities to donate their time. Also, we are currently working with several student groups, most actively the Food Sustainability Project, to help educate our students about wasting food and the benefits of supporting a charity like City Harvest. The reaction throughout the student body has been positive, including articles in the newspapers, The Columbia Spectator, and New York Metro.

Dining Services, as part of GEO (the Group for Environmental Opportunities), also helped with the Give + Go Green Campaign during Move-Out, which resulted in a truckload of donations for City Harvest.

NEXT STEP: Our Waste Prevention Program will help us feed even more homeless New Yorkers in 2006 and beyond, by educating our students to watch portions, to take only what you’ll eat, and to help reduce waste in general.

Local Purchasing

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: We are working with the Columbia Food Sustainability Project (CFSP) to bring more local options to all of our locations. In John Jay Dining Hall and all the retail locations, we are now serving locally grown apples and fresh apple cider from Red Jacket Orchards in Geneva, New York. In addition, we work with a Long Island produce supply company that purchases and delivers local fruit and vegetables in season from farms on Long Island, recent “in-season” offerings included pears, potatoes, and tomatoes. In John Jay and all of the retail units as well, we offer locally produced milk from Beyer Farms distributed by our own local dairy in Queens, New York.

NEXT STEP: We are constantly searching for new local products. Our focus right now is on finding a great, local coffee. Have a suggestion? Drop us a line at eats@columbia.edu.

Fair Trade

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: Since 2000, all of our locations serve at least one variety of Fair Trade coffee from Blue Java or Starbucks. In 2007, we switched to all Fair Trade & Organic coffee in all of our locations.

What is Fair Trade? Fair Trade is an innovative, market-based approach to sustainable development. Fair Trade helps family farmers in developing countries to gain direct access to international markets, as well as to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace. In addition most Fair Trade products are certified organic and shade grown. This means that the products you buy maintain biodiversity, provide shelter for migratory birds and help reduce global warming. For more information, please go to TransFair USA.

NEXT STEP: We are constantly looking to expand and improve our offering of Fair Trade products.

Sustainable Seafood

John Jay now serves sustainable seafood in the dining hall, in accordance with the Monterey Bay rankings of sustainable seafood. Monterey Bay is a program of Monterey Bay Aquarium designed to raise consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources. We recommend which seafood to buy or avoid, helping consumers to become advocates for environmentally friendly seafood. All cod, tilapia, flounder and any other seafood served in John Jay in the future will be based on the Good Alternatives or Best Choices categories from the Monterey Bay system of ranking.

 

Water

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: We sell Keeper Springs Water in all of our locations. Keeper Springs is bottled in Randolph, Vermont, from true, sustainable springs, which means that less water is harvested than is naturally replenished. In addition, this company donates ALL of its profits, after taxes, to support the WaterKeeper Alliance, an international network of environmental groups that protect America's waterways.

NEXT STEP: We will continue to look for similar opportunities with other environmentally forward companies. Know of one? Let us know about it at eats@columbia.edu.

Organics

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: We've formed a unique collaboration with the student group, LOAF: Local Organic Agriculture Friends, to create a food co-op. The students of LOAF approached Dining looking for available space to open a business. Although we had no unused space, we were able to reorganize a section of JJ’s Place to sell local organic products. Additionally, Dining offered the group support in working with vendors, purchasing, cash handling, and register tracking. The result has been the creation of a successful, socially responsible student enterprise. Both members and non-members may purchase their organic products: organic yogurt and milk, soy milk and tofu, cookies, pasta, pasta sauces, teas, and ice cream.

NEXT STEP: The LOAF co-op has been a profitable student enterprise since their first year. As a result LOAF has been able to invest their profits back into their business and grow. Look for new products next semester.

Kitchen Equipment

EFFORT & PARTNERSHIP: We work with Energy Star, a government-backed program helping businesses protect the environment through superior energy efficiency, to develop an energy strategy. All new equipment is manufactured to use the latest energy saving technology and environmentally safe coolants. We also perform regular preventive maintenance, including cleaning all filters to help the units run cooler and more efficiently. We also use Humitech moisture reducers in the coolers to increase energy efficiency, use less power, maintain cooler units, and increase the useful life of fruit and vegetables.

NEXT STEP: We will look to systematically audit our equipment to replace inefficient, older equipment with new Energy Star-efficient appliances.

Green Business Pledge

While meeting with our colleagues at Stanford, we learned about their Green Business Pledge. Their pledge captured the thoughts and mission of our own initiatives so well, we’ve adopted it:

We believe a successful business is dependent on a healthy environment. We are actively working to show our environmental responsibility to our community by committing to the following objectives: to comply with all applicable regulations and to strive to exceed compliance; to conserve energy, water, materials, and other resources; to develop and implement practices that prevent pollution and waste; to be an environmentally responsible business within our community.

Vending Machines

The beverage vending machines in Hartley, Wallach, and John Jay now contain the Vending Miser energy management system. This system conserves energy, has a longer machine lifespan, and keeps your beverages just as cool. The energy savings result in a reduction of both operation costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Our vending machines now use 46% less energy then before and are comparable in daily energy performance to new Energy Star qualified machines.