| Overall Rating | Silver |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 60.21 |
| Liaison | Feletia Lee |
| Submission Date | June 28, 2024 |
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
OP-8: Sustainable Dining
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
2.00 / 2.00 |
Feletia
Lee Chief Sustainability Officer Office of Sustainability |
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor host a farmers market, community supported agriculture (CSA) or fishery program, or urban agriculture project, or support such a program in the local community?:
A brief description of the farmers market, CSA or urban agriculture project:
UNCW Dining hosts two farmers markets throughout the year in coordination with National Eat Local Day and Earth Day. An average of ten to twelve farmers and businesses come out to offer students access to sustainable local produce.
UNCW Dining has four hyper-local cultivation operations including; A micro-greens tower, three hydroponic Babylon systems, an aquaponics system, and five garden beds. The gardens include two raised beds dedicated to seasonal produce, two low-laying beds for herbs, and one raised pollinator garden built in partnership with the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. All produce grown from the cultivation operations mentioned above is utilized by UNCW Dining chefs for dining operations.
UNCW and UNCW Campus Dining also partner with a nonprofit organization called Feast Down East. Feast Down East’s mission is to “strengthen the farming communities in and around the Southeastern NC area by providing resources, education, and distribution opportunities to farmers while addressing equitable food access in communities with the greatest need." UNCW Campus Dining uses these connections to ensure students and faculty access to locally sourced food on campus.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor host a sustainability-themed food outlet on-site, either independently or in partnership with a contractor or retailer?:
A brief description of the sustainability-themed food outlet:
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor support disadvantaged businesses, social enterprises, and/or local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through its food and beverage purchasing?:
A brief description of the support for disadvantaged businesses, social enterprises, and/or local SMEs:
UNCW Dining prioritizes working with local businesses which more often than not are considered SMEs.
- Our local food trucks are small family-owned businesses in and around Wilmington. We have at least one food truck come to our campus every week to provide students with alternate dining options. They also support our outdoor sporting events by providing food for attendees.
- Our partnership with Feast Down East has allowed us to create a network of small local farmers whose produce is utilized in our dining operations.
- We also partner with small location businesses in our on-campus retail spaces. Our Local Restaurant Row highlights where we highlight small local restaurants including Shacka Taco and Tackle Box.
- Our on-campus convenience stores provide customers with local beverages and baked goods from small businesses in Wilmington.
- Our catering and concession also utilize products from SMEs when available.
Estimated percentage of total food and beverage expenditures on products from disadvantaged businesses, social enterprises, and/or local SMEs:
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor host low impact dining events or promote plant-forward options?:
A brief description of the low impact dining events and/or plant-forward options:
UNCW Campus Dining holds monthly events highlighting and educating our campus community on Coolfood Meals: Coolfoods is an initiative of The World Resources Institute. Cooldfood helps organizations, like ours, reduce the climate impact of the food they serve by shifting towards more plant-rich foods and in turn aid in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Outside of our event, UNCW aims to offer 5 cool food meals per day at each of our dining locations.
Our Registered Dietitian also highlights vegan recipes during his “Dietitian is in” events as well as creating themed menus for national holidays related to food i.e. World Vegan Day
- 39% of our dishes on Campus can be made Vegetarian/Vegan
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor have a vegan dining program that makes diverse, complete-protein vegan options available to every member of the campus community at every meal?:
A brief description of the vegan dining program:
UNCW Campus Dining strives to meet the needs of everyone by offering menu items for dietary needs and preferences. Our university has a growing number of students who are vegan and/or follow a plant-based diet. In response, Campus Dining provides custom menu items and the flexibility to change our regular menu items to be vegan with substitutes. Below is a snapshot of our vegan items at some of our locations on campus.
Wagoner Dining Hall: Options for each meal include but are not limited to made-to-order Just Egg omelets or breakfast sandwiches, house-made vegan sub roll with any combination of veggies, humus, vegan cheese, and vegan meat substitutes, a robust salad bar with rotating seasonal composed salads and vegan offerings, rotation of daily vegan desserts, vegan burgers, and a vegan hot line creation.
- The Shore: Options for each meal include but are not limited to assorted locally sourced bagels and breads with local preserves & avocado spread, BYO salad bar with vegan cheese and dressing, vegan smoothie bowls, sauté plate with choice of
seasonal veggies, toppings, and sauces, vegan mac n' cheese with toppings, fruit and berry bar, and a create-your-own burrito or nachos bowl with rice or salad with a choice of vegan topping and protein options Dub’s Cafe: Diners can enjoy a full salad bar along with made-to-order options for lunch, and dinner including vegan protein options for a weekly rotational international-themed menu, vegan burgers, veg-head wrap, and a vegan PLT,
We have made it a priority to make sure everyone visiting our dining halls has access to meals that meet their dietary needs. All vegan options are labeled on our menu’s screens with a vegan icon, so options are easily identifiable. We also update our Vegan dining guide yearly to ensure students are aware of the options available to them at all residential and retail locations on campus.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor inform customers about low impact food choices and sustainability practices through labelling and signage in dining halls?:
A brief description of the sustainability labelling and signage in dining halls:
Campus Dining has designed signage to highlight farms and farmers utilized for procurement in our dining halls. We have made it a priority to post signage next to any local produce we use in our dining hall when it is being served with farmer bios and locations. Patrons also can identify options that are vegan, vegetarian, and low carbon certified meals - Coolfoods by icons displayed on menus. We also highlight certifications we have received at our dining halls including Green Restaurant certifications in all of our residential locations and catering department as well as Ocean Friendly Establishment certs in all of our residential locations.
Campus dining also promotes our choose to reuse reusable mug campaign, skip the straw initiative and the reusable to-go program in all participating locations. We also highlight the main dining hall on campus, Wagoner, being a zero-waste facility.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor participate in a competition or commitment program and/or use a food waste prevention system to track and improve its food management practices?:
A brief description of the food recovery competition or commitment program or food waste prevention system:
UNCW's efforts to reduce food waste and address food insecurity focus on prevention, recovery, and recycling, in partnership with clients and customers. To guide our efforts, we align with the EPA wasted food scale and ReFED Roadmap to 2030.
As a company, Aramark has committed to reducing food waste in the U.S. by 50% by 2030 from our 2015 baseline.
In the last year, UNCW has implemented the Leanpath program which helps our university track our pre-consumer waste through waste type and their weights. We have been able to use the data collected from this program to identify the most commonly wasted items and adjust procurement and the menus at residential locations as needed.
When applicable UNCW donates any excess food to local partners.
Across our operations, we have established practices from initial purchase to final waste disposal that decrease the overall cost of waste both environmentally and financially.
Has the institution or its primary dining services contractor implemented trayless dining (in which trays are removed from or not available in dining halls) and/or modified menus/portions to reduce post-consumer food waste?:
A brief description of the trayless dining or modified menu/portion program:
Trayless dining has been implemented at all three all-you-can-eat dining halls since 2007.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor donate food that would otherwise go to waste to feed people?:
A brief description of the food donation program:
Food is donated to several entities including Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina – Wilmington Branch, Good Shepherd, A Safe Place, DREAMS of Wilmington, as well as our on-campus food pantry, Hawk's Harvest. Food that is not edible for human consumption will be donated to SkyWatch Bird Rescue. In 2023 we donated around 2.500 pounds of food to the organizations mentioned above.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor divert food materials from the landfill, incinerator or sewer for animal feed or industrial uses?:
A brief description of the food materials diversion program:
Cooking oil is collected at all Campus Dining locations with fryers and sent to Mahoney Environmental and Filta Oil to be converted into eco-friendly biodiesel fuel.
In 2023 Filta collected 10,925 pounds of oil from our facilities and Mahoney Environmental collected 3,157 pounds.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor have a pre-consumer composting program?:
A brief description of the pre-consumer composting program:
Pre-consumer waste is composted at all three of our residential dining halls:
Dub’s Cafe composts pre-consumer waste on-site via the EcoVim food waste dehydrator, which can dehydrate up to 250 pounds of food in 14 to 15 hours, which leaves around a total of 25 pounds of nitrogen-rich soil additive. The product is then picked up and utilized by on-campus landscaping team
Wagoner Dining Hall and The Shore’s pre and post-consumer waste is hauled to an in-vessel composting unit at the New Hanover County landfill.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor have a post-consumer composting program?:
A brief description of the post-consumer composting program:
Wagoner Dining and The Shore send all post-consumer waste to an in-vessel unit at the New Hanover County Landfill. This program was piloted in coordination with the university and is now a fully permitted facility serving the county. In 2018, UNCW and Aramark partnered with New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste on a large-scale composting project. This solution was an innovative partnership solving for the campus’ inability to permit on any of their land and the county’s need for a consistent stream of organic materials to initiate a composting program.
Since then, the project has grown to include multiple stakeholders. The soil additive is used at Airlie Gardens, the New Hanover Arboretum, in our campus landscaping, and in other county parks.
Our haulers are GFL Environmental and Wall Recycling
In 2023 GFL and WALL conjointly collected 108.05 tons of organic matter from The Shore and Wagoner Dining Hall.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor utilize reusable service ware for “dine in” meals?:
A brief description of the reusable service ware program:
All our residential dining halls provide reusable service ware.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor provide reusable and/or third party certified compostable containers and service ware for “to-go” meals (in conjunction with an on-site composting program)?:
A brief description of the compostable containers and service ware:
Since the Fall of 2023, UNCW Dining’s two largest residential dining locations have implemented a reusable to-go box program available to all meal plan holders.
At Dub’s Café, compostable food service packaging is used for to-go meals.
Does the institution or its primary dining services contractor offer discounts or other incentives to customers who use reusable containers instead of disposable or compostable containers in “to-go” food service operations?:
A brief description of the reusable container discount or incentives program:
UNCW Dining runs a “Choose to Reuse” program, where a discount of 25 cents, is given at participating locations to individuals who bring in their own cups for coffee, tea, and fountain drinks.
A brief description of other sustainability-related initiatives not covered above:
- UNCW Dining Sustainability holds at least one weekly event to educate our campus community about sustainability initiatives in dining:
- At these tablings, we highlight various topics discussed above as well as Fairtrade products on campus, our Green Restaurant Certifications, Ocean Friendly Establishment Certifications, and Waste Diversion Techniques and Tracking.
- Fairtrade products are certified on economic, social, and environmental standards. Some of the issues these standards oversee are child labor rights & safety, gender equality, climate change, poverty, and workers' rights. Events held in the past have been fair trade coffee, tea, and hot chocolate bars, fair trade smores, and ice cream sampling.
- The GRA scores restaurants' environmental initiatives on a 4-star system. The certification process reviews energy, water, waste, resources, chemicals & pollution, building & furnishing, food, and education & transparency. All 3 of our residential dining halls are certified 3-star Green Restaurants with The Shore on an action plan to obtain 4 stars next certification process.
- Ocean Friendly Establishment" (OFE) is a community-based certification earned by businesses that reduce their plastic waste and seek out sustainable options in serving their community. This certification operates on a 5-star system and all residential dining halls are 5-star OFE certified.
- We also complete two different waste audits each month:
- The first is to track and address contamination in our waste streams at our retail location. We use this data to create educational social media posts and outreach events to address contamination issues on campus.
- We have also developed a QR that is on all trash bins on campus with all the disposable products from dining operations and their proper disposal techniques.
- The second is a dish return audit where we weigh the amount of food waste and types of food that comes back during a given lunch period. We use that data to adjust our procurement as well as dining hall menus.
- The first is to track and address contamination in our waste streams at our retail location. We use this data to create educational social media posts and outreach events to address contamination issues on campus.
- At these tablings, we highlight various topics discussed above as well as Fairtrade products on campus, our Green Restaurant Certifications, Ocean Friendly Establishment Certifications, and Waste Diversion Techniques and Tracking.
- "Swipes for Seahawks" is a program that provides UNCW students who are experiencing food insecurity access to healthy and well-balanced meals in our campus dining halls. Students with select meal plans are all eligible to donate one guest meal per semester to a fellow Seahawks.
- Community outreach is a priority in campus dining within the last year we have helped Sky Watch Bird Rescue paint fences and completed years of work, we hosted a community dinner for DREAMs where we got to connect with our community, and we volunteered at the food bank to help pack meals for their walk-in market.
- UNCW Dining also provides free cooking classes to students. These classes teach students the importance of well-balanced meals including local products and how to cook for a specific number of people to limit food waste in their homes.
Website URL where information about the sustainable dining programs is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.