Emory University
OP-8: Sustainable Dining

Managed by the Emory Office of Sustainability Initiatives and Emory Dining since 2008, the Emory Farmers Market has been a lively campus community space for local farms and businesses that offer a wide selection of fresh produce, hand-crafted goods, and diverse beverage and lunch options for students, faculty, and staff. The market is held every Tuesday year-round with about 20 vendors except during school breaks, and on a biweekly schedule in the summer. Market programming includes efforts to reduce plastic and other waste, to educate about climate and agriculture, and to host seasonal cooking demos.

Located on the edge of the Oxford campus, the Emory Oxford Organic Farm was created in 2014 after the donation of eleven acres of land from an Emory alumnus. While the Oxford campus itself is not included in the scope of STARS for Emory, the Oxford Organic Farm offers a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) service to Emory community members with pick-up locations at several places on Emory's Druid Hills campus and at the Emory Farmers Market. The CSA has 30-50 participants on the Atlanta campus and 70-100 participants in total each season. In addition, Emory supports the CSA service offered by Moore Farms & Friends, a local farm 90 minutes from Atlanta, by having an on-campus pick-up location for pick up every Thursday (https://moorefarmsandfriends.com/pickup-locations/#!/georgia). 

The Educational Garden Project offers students, faculty, and the Emory community an opportunity to engage in local, sustainable food production. Through education, awareness, and meaningful work, the educational gardens offer opportunities to grow local, seasonal, diverse, and healthy food. Six food gardens, one medicinal herb garden, and one garden that provides plants that enrich primate diets are scattered across campus. All gardens are run by volunteers with the guidance of a part-time Educational Gardens Coordinator and a Gardens Intern for the summer. The Coordinator and Intern lead garden workshops, tours, and general campus outreach and education.

Kaldi's Coffee became the main coffee shop on campus in Fall 2015 and now has three locations. According to their mission, "Kaldi’s Coffee is dedicated to creating a memorable coffee experience for our customers and guests, committing to sustainable business practices, providing educational opportunities, and supporting the communities that we serve. It is our mission to exceed the competition and continue company growth by executing the above fundamentals. Kaldi’s Coffee will strive to develop team members, build our brand, and promote our products."

On Emory's campus, all of Kaldi's coffees and teas are fair trade certified and roasted locally when possible. Educational signage about fair trade principles is on the wall in their coffee shops to educate customers. Kaldi's menu is plant-forward with a variety of vegan and vegetarian options. Kaldi's also participates in Emory's waste management system by providing only compostable and recyclable food containers and only providing recycling and composting bins (no landfill bins) in their spaces.

Emory Dining purchases directly from Emerald City Bagels (https://www.emeraldcitybagels.com/), which is a local, women-owned business. Emory Dining also purchases from Pure Bliss, a 100% organic certified business based in Atlanta. Pure Bliss is also a weekly Farmers Market vendor. Both Emory Dining and Emory University Hospital purchase produce from the local food aggregator, The Common Market, which sources entirely from local farmers, many of whom are women and people of color. This food hub makes selling to institutions like Emory accessible for small, local farms.

https://www.thecommonmarket.org/locations/the-common-market-georgia/our-farmers 

Through signage, online daily menus and menu emails, and interactive information tables throughout Emory's dining facilities, guests learn how to make low-carbon diet choices, reduce waste, and the importance of eating local. The online daily menus allow diners to view vegan, vegetarian, and local menu items available at each dining location. The residential dining hall has a 100% vegan station.

Every café has menu options that include vegan protein sources at every meal. Guests can also make standard non-vegan menu items vegan on request. The online daily menus allow diners to view vegan, vegetarian, and local menu items available at each dining location. 

A vegan Stem-to-Root Station is front and center when entering the newest Dining facility, the Dobbs Common Table(DCT). Options include tofu, tempeh, seitan, a variety of beans and legumes, and whole grains including quinoa. Other Emory Dining cafes offer vegan options, including house-made bean burgers, hummus vegetable wraps, scrambled tofu, and build-your-own pasta or stir-fries with vegan sauces and tofu. 

In the hospitals, vegan meals are available for patients; vegan entrees and sides are designated with a special symbol on the posted a la carte menu for retail food services.

Emory has a comprehensive labeling system to help guests find a meal that best suits their dietary needs and provides information regarding sustainability as well. Specific icons are placed next to each menu item to designate items that are vegan, vegetarian, halal, kosher, made without gluten-containing ingredients, contain humane animal proteins, contain sustainable seafood, and/or contain ingredients produced locally (within an 8-state region). Farm and source names are included in menus wherever possible for both dining halls and Emory Catering. Vegan, vegetarian, and local menu items for all Emory Dining locations are also noted on the online, interactive daily menus and in the daily menu emails.

At the 2015 Food Waste and Hunger Summit held in Athens, GA, Emory food service Bon Appetit announced they were taking it further with a new, formal commitment to food recovery. They vowed that by 2018, 80% of the accounts would be Food Recovery Verified(https://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/frv/), meaning they are regularly (not just occasionally) donating their excess food to people in need and are certified by an independent third party. At the time of reporting, Bon Appetit was taking steps to recommit itself to meeting this goal by the end of 2024. They track our progress toward this goal in their client-facing Food Standards Dashboard (https://www.bamco.com/press-releases/food-standards-dashboard-2022/).

Emory University requires all Emory Dining halls and outlets to have pre- and post-consumer waste programs with bins for multi-stream recycling and composting. No landfill bins are used. 

At Emory University Hospital, there is a pre-consumer composting program in place. Leftovers are tracked daily to gauge future production needs better.

In Cox Hall, which is a dining venue with multiple vendors from which customers can purchase food, trays are not available.

In the Rollins Café, which is a dining location operated entirely by Bon Appetit staff who cook and serve individual meals for customers, trays are not provided.

The WoodPEC and the Student Activity & Academic Center (SAAC) dining locations for second-, third- and fourth-year students also do not serve food with trays.

As mentioned previously, during the reporting period, Emory food service Bon Appetit was taking steps to recommit itself to meeting the goal of regularly (not just occasionally) donating their excess food to people in need and being certified by an independent third party by the end of the year. They track our progress toward this goal in the Food Standards Dashboard (https://www.bamco.com/timeline/food-standards-dashboard/).

Meanwhile, starting in 2021, Emory Dining partnered with Slow Food Emory, a student-run organization, to pack leftover food once a week from DCT, the residential dining location, and distribute it to people in need at Emory Woodruff Library. Bulk food in trays was apportioned into single-serve containers and distributed to students and night-time residential staff.

The hospital cafes make weekly prepared food donations to Second Helpings Atlanta, a nonprofit food rescue organization whose mission is to reduce hunger and food waste in the Metro Atlanta area by rescuing surplus food and distributing it to those in need. The focus of this program is on donations of higher protein food items such as eggs.

Used fryer oil is collected from two Emory Dining locations and the Emory University Hospital cafes by FiltaFry. This vendor filters the oil and sends it to an additional processor for conversion to bio-diesel. 

https://gofilta.com/services/filtabio-waste-oil-recycling/

Pre-consumer food waste and animal bedding are collected at Emory Dining and deposited into 35-gallon bins.  The bins are transported to a local facility in Atlanta where materials are comingled and delivered to a facility where the material is processed into compost.  Food, fiber, and compostable services residuals that can be composted in pre-consumer composting streams include meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, bones, eggs and dairy products, table scraps and scrapings, fruits and vegetables, bread, dough, pasta and grains, coffee grounds, filters & tea bags, paper towels, napkins, and plates, paper take-out containers, pizza boxes, paper cups, waxed cardboard, and paper.  Non-contaminated BPI and/or ASTMD6400 or ASTMD6868 compostable food service ware/packaging may also be commingled with any food scraps.

Post-consumer food waste is deposited into dedicated composting bins with bio-degradable liners and collected by Emory's Dining Services, Building and Residential Services (BRS), and Emory Recycles staff. The materials are deposited into 95-gallon bins that are collected at building loading docks. Post-consumer composting containers are in all major buildings and exterior spaces on the Emory campus. Food, fiber, and non-contaminated compostable services residuals can be composted in either pre-consumer or post-consumer composting streams including meat, poultry, fish shellfish and bones eggs and dairy products, table scraps and scrapings, fruits and vegetables, bread, dough, pasta and grains, coffee grounds, filters & tea bags, paper towels, napkins and plates, paper take-out containers, pizza boxes, paper cups, waxed cardboard, and paper.  Non-contaminated BPI and/or ASTMD6400 or ASTMD6868 compostable food service ware/packaging may also be commingled with any food scraps.

All service ware in the main residential undergraduate dining hall DCT was reusable, with the exception of the kosher meal program. Dine-in customers in the food court dining venue, Cox Hall, can choose reusable service ware instead of compostable utensils, which are intended for those who take their food to-go.

All to-go materials in the food court dining venue, Cox Hall, are compostable or recyclable. The to-go utensils, bowls, cups, and clam shells are all compostable. Sushi is served in recyclable plastic containers. Compost and recycling bins are available to customers inside and immediately outside the facility. There are not any landfill bins inside or outside of this dining venue, only recycling and composting bins, which are accompanied by color-coded visuals that show which materials go in each bin.

At all campus dining coffee locations (Kaldi's and Dancing Goats), customers who bring their own reusable containers are given a $.10-$.15 discount, depending on the location.

Emory Dining is a committed partner in the Healthy Emory initiative, an enterprise-wide program with a vision to “[use] its expertise in research, health care, and higher education to engage, inspire, and support each individual to live healthy and flourish.” Emory Dining collaborated with university stakeholders to devise the Better Choice labeling program, which highlights entrees and sides that adhere to specific dietary guidelines.

All data reported in this section are from September 2022-August 2023.