Dining Services scores on local food initiatives The College strives to reduce waste while supporting area farmers

Author: Rachael Jennings

In the commotion of Ross Dining Hall, you brave the line and emerge with a plate of chicken parmesan, unaware that you are part of a chain of sustainability and environmental awareness that has resulted in the steaming poultry dish in your hands.

Middlebury Dining Services' primary source, Burlington Food Services, has provided many of the ingredients in the chicken parmesan - including the parmesan itself, which hails from Schuman Parmesan and Great Lakes Parmesan.

Even the room in which you stand is environmentally engineered - natural sunlight spills in from the westerly facing windows and energy efficient lighting brightens the setting in the evening. Ross Dining Hall was designed with environmental concerns in mind: the faucets in the kitchen are low-flow faucets, the energy generated from the walk-in freezers is used to heat the mechanical workroom, and automatic sensors keep the air conditioning in check as the demand for cooling rises and falls.

"'Green' is something that we as a College and a department live every day," said Matthew Biette, director of Dining Services. "I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that Middlebury began an Environmental Studies program back in 1965. That and the fact that Vermont has had a very proactive approach to land stewardship for generations have led us all to be more green."

Indeed, the College has been buying local foods for decades, if not centuries. Dining Services has been composting with the College for over 15 years and, just last year, they removed trays from the dining halls to help the College reach its carbon reduction goals. Serving upwards of 7,000 meals a day, it is imperative that the College work to maintain efficient and environmentally friendly dining practices. These efforts are displayed through the efficient presentation of meals, the implementation of local food, and effective waste management.

Before digging into a meal, there are preventative measures you can take to ensure less wastefulness. Each incoming class of first-year students is given Nalgenes and reusable Middlebury Cupps Mugs. At large outdoor functions, the College uses melamine reusable plates. These seemingly minor actions actually influence healthier consumer habits among students from the start of their Middlebury careers.

One of the biggest measures the College took was the recent abolition of trays from the dining halls. Though that decision may have made sledding a bit more difficult, it significantly decreased the amount of waste we produce simply by making students more aware of exactly what - and how much - they want to eat.

In the winter, the dining halls provide salad greens from Florida and California. Still, even after the ice snakes over the sidewalks, Dining Services finds ways to support organic and locally grown food.

All of the College's milk products are produced at Monument Farms in Weybridge. The barrels of Wilcox Dairy ice cream in the dining halls hail from nearby Manchester, Vt. The dining hall's shell eggs are from Maple Meadows in Salisbury; the maple syrup that compliments the pancakes on the weekends is made in Starksboro and Bristol; and all of the apples come from four local orchards, which also produce the cider, apple slices for pies and applesauce in the dining halls. Many of the vegetables come from local farms via Burlington Food Services and Black River Produce.

"Buying local foods ­- which in turn supports the local economy ­- is extremely important to us," stressed Biette.

Even with the current state of the economy, Dining Services is adamant about continuing to buy locally.

"We are looking at other ways of buying foods so that we may keep our local purchases the same," said Biette. "We are actually looking to local farms to grow certain crops for us thus making more local purchasing possible."

The Middlebury College Organic Garden (MCOG) sells about 80 percent of what it grows to Dining Services, 15 percent to local restaurants and donates the remaining five percent to the Addison County Food Shelf. MCOG workers also sell their bottled honey retail through the Center for the Arts Box Office.

In the weeks between the end of the Language Schools and the beginning of the fall semester, MCOG sells its produce to restaurants in Middlebury. Out of their earned income from vegetable sales, they are able to purchase supplies, seeds, equipment and tools.

"I think more people want to know where their food comes from and how it is grown," said Jay Leshinsky, director of MCOG. "I think that has led to a revival of home gardening and also to a more widespread desire to know about and use organic gardening methods."

Local farms and MCOG help support the environmental vision of Dining Services. As always, Dining Services will also continue to prepare many of their menu items from scratch, an act which avoids the waste often produced in corporate "open a box and go" methods.

Even with all of the effort behind the production and presentation of the food, though, some waste is inevitable. On a national scale, food waste comprises about seven percent of the solid waste stream. The College has attempted to lower that figure, converting nearly 300 tons of food waste into compost for greenhouses and gardens. Food preparation scraps and other waste items - such as paper napkins and paper towels - which comprise about 70 percent of Middlebury's food waste are all composted now.

As for that extra chicken parmesan or the crust of the Tollhouse Cookie pie you simply could not finish - these items, referred to as "plate waste," are run through a pulper, a process that removes excess water.

Other frequently used measures that help reduce dining waste include the "Grille techninque." This familiar method employs three public sorting stations, labeled "trash," "recycling," and "compost," in which diners can dispose of their plate waste. These bins are a simple tool for sorting waste, which show that? all it takes to help reduce our footprint is a flick of the wrist in the right direction.

Since the College stopped using trays, one ounce of waste per meal has been saved ­- and an ounce can actually add up to as much as three-quarters of a pound of true waste, depending on how water-soluble the material is. This figure includes the pulped or dry waste in combination with the pre-consumer vegetable scraps.

In order to monitor waste patterns, Dining Services constantly tweak their menus for acceptance.

"We try to give the appropriate serving utensils so that over portioning does not happen," added Biette.

These dining decisions are just some of the ways that Dining Services is trying to make students think before they eat, by showing us how beneficial reexamining our dining practices truly is.

"We are a leader and people often ask me how they, too, can be leaders," said Biette. "What they don't realize is that we think a certain way; we don't look at a list of things to do and then check them off. Our staff, our faculty and our students often have conversations that bring about another great idea. We had independent studies that revolved around a greenhouse way before people were into that. At Middlebury, 'green' is part of the way we think and run the business."