Sustainability in Ohio State's Dining Services
March 5, 2021
Feeding a campus with roughly 60,000 students is no easy job, but Student Life Dining Services does so while continuously adopting and maintaining sustainable operations in all of the campus' dining locations. Lesa Holford, the Executive Chef of Dining Services, spoke with us to share what Dining Services is doing to bring fresh, diverse foods to campus dining locations while diverting waste.
Using locally sourced ingredients is one of the many ways that Dining Services strives to make the dining selections at Ohio State more healthy and sustainable. Locally sourced foods, foods that are grown and processed within 250 miles of campus, are not only fresher, they also have less of a negative impact on the environment. Reducing the necessary transportation or food miles reduces the overall use of fossil fuels in the process. Lesa also added, “Promoting local farms and producers help them stay in business and preserve land. Knowing where your food comes from is a big win too, and it gives us the opportunity to have a story behind what we offer, so the consumer can have more of a connection with their food.”
OSU Dining Services also has an array of local vendor partners and partnerships with small businesses that assist in diversifying the menu. According to Lesa, partnerships with local vendors and restaurants help Dining Services to fill gaps using their own areas of expertise. Dining has also worked with local vendors for specific dairy items, coffee and tea, salad dressings, sustainable seafood, and baked goods just to name a few. An example is Dining’s partnership with a local Indian restaurant, Biryani. There are now two locations on campus that serve Biryani, and as Lesa stated, “This allows us to be able to provide an experience that otherwise might be challenging for us to execute.” Lesa has additionally worked with a local company to replicate the marinara used in Dining’s Central Production Kitchen which is made from 85% local tomatoes. Dining Services also works with a local dairy farm to develop the popular dessert-style milk on campus. Finally, the OSU Meat Lab has also worked closely with Dining to provide fresh, locally grown and processed meat to Dining.
As Executive Chef, Lesa has a big role in planning the menu for Dining Services. When asked where she gathers inspiration for the menu, she said “Mostly, our students!” Dining Services considers the vast and diverse student population’s wants and needs when preparing their menus. Dining hosts focus groups with various Student Life organizations, the Residence Hall Advisory Council, and focus groups that emphasize food allergens and intolerances. Coupled with feedback from these groups and broader reactions to new food trends from social media and other culinary sources, Lesa gets an idea of what to put on the menu.
Sustainability and food go hand in hand. The way we grow, raise, process, package, store and access our food has a direct impact on the planet. OSU Dining Services takes this responsibility seriously and is already implementing multiple methods to ensure that dining operations have a minimal impact on the environment. Dining Services diverts pre- and post-consumer waste from landfills via composting and bio-digesters in all of its Traditions locations, the Ohio Union, and the Culinary Production Kitchen. According to Lesa, Curl Market and the Production Kitchen are currently working towards Zero Waste certification, for for diverting 90% of waste from landfills. Cafes around campus are working with Facilities Operations and Development to collect used coffee grounds and use them in place of artificial fertilizers, which prevents 200-1200 pounds of coffee grounds from entering landfills each week. Their to-go containers are compostable, and Dining is looking at ways to expand its reusable to-go ware for next academic year.
Dining Services is taking many steps to becoming more sustainable, but students have their part to do as well. The biggest step they can take is to only order food that they know they will finish. Much of our food waste comes from students who just don’t “clean their plates.” Other steps students can take to divert waste include , dispose of packaging properly—recycling contamination often occurs with students placing compostable materials into the recycle bin. Remember: to-go containers are compostable- so they cannot be recycled.