Brown Dining has worked to reduce the amount of uneaten foods which goes into the trash and to maximize the amount of food which is rerouted to soup kitchens or to local farms where it can be used as animal feed.  Currently, Brown Dining runs a "Pig Bucket" program.  All leftover food which cannot be re-refrigerated (according to Health Department Guidelines) along with all organic matter generated from meal preparation (potato peels, melon rind, onion skin, broccoli stalks, etc) are placed into large plastic tubs.  Twice a week, a farmer picks up these bins to bring back to his pig farm.

In this way, Brown Dining is able to reduce the amount of food waste that ends of up a landfill while at the same time, supporting a local farmer.  This is an example of how we are meeting our Community Harvest goal of creating a more socially and environmentally sustainable food system.

A few months after we started out "Take-Out" program in the Dining Halls, it became clear we were generating too much packaging waste. Every single meal "To-Go" meal meant another plastic "clam-shell" in the landfill. We knew students wanted to take their meals on the road. We knew students wanted to see something that was more environmentally friendly. We also knew a reusable container program would fail because students would not return containers (or they would be to smelly when they did). So we came up with a creative solution: biodegradable containers. The ones we chose are made of corn starch and are predicted to break down (in appropriate conditions) in as little as 2 years. The program has gone well so far. Happily, Brown Dining is now one little step closer to being a socially and environmentally sustainable dining operation!