Wright State University is working toward reducing food waste through Chartwell’s new policy, entitled “Waste Not,” which took effect in this past semester.
This management system measures waste and diversion opportunities within all the dining facilities on campus and at the Nutter Center. Employees have begun to distribute waste in bins to capture and document food waste.
The former policy, “Trim Trax,” was used to track the pre-consumer food waste in 2013, according to Amber Reading, director of marketing for WSU Hospitality Services.
The new policy is being implemented in phases across campus and is currently being used in The Hangar and Union Market. The next phase of the policy will be tracking, measuring and reducing food waste in catering. These recordings are done each week and submitted into an online data base.
“Hospitality Services wants to help decrease the amount of food that is wasted annually in our operation,” said Reading. “At Wright State, we are working to control food waste during production as a key focus, also ensuring we effectively manage our inventory to ensure there are not food losses attributed to expired product.”
One of the key factors for the development of this policy was the significant contributor to methane gas production that food waste can create, according to Reading.
“’Waste Not’ was developed to bring awareness of the issues of food waste to our culinary and management teams, and provide them with the necessary tools and resources to reduce food waste, increase food recovery and implement source reduction. Our organization has a goal to reduce food waste by 20 percent by 2020, which was kicked off with our national Stop Food Waste Day in April,” Reading said.
This policy will also take place across the country in schools that contract with Chartwells and will be at 100 percent participation by May, 2018.
