Housing and Dining focuses on sustainability, zero-waste and natural foods
CU dining halls are going green this year in a continuing push for zero-waste on the CU campus.
Three times a day students file into the dining halls, serving themselves a variety of food for a small fee. The halls are an important part of student life for most.
Although Housing and Dining Services on campus has provided their customers with a variety of food choices available at many times, their focus has recently shifted to sustainability as they have joined the campus-wide goals to reduce the amount of energy used.
Housing and Dining Services has been working with local farmers and produce suppliers to focus on using natural, organic and local foods, according to Amy Beckstrom, the director of Dining Services at CU.
“All of our ground beef and patties in all the dining hall operations are from Dakota farms all natural ground beef,” Beckstrom said. “We also use fair trade and shade grown coffee.”
The serving of the food also proposes other options of sustainability. Zero-waste events like Global Jam, a welcome picnic for freshman held on Farrand Field, used food that had been bought in bulk instead of the individual packaging that creates waste.
“Almost all of our catering events this past summer were zero-waste,” Beckstrom said. “All of our outdoor events are also zero-waste.”
Housing and Dining Services has implemented two initiatives on campus this year. They have provided all incoming freshman with a Chico Bag which allows the elimination of plastic bags. According to Beckstrom, 600,000 plastic bags were used last year in the Grab-n-Go operations on campus.
The second of these initiatives is the installation of triple filtered water stations outside three of the Grab-n-Go locations. These stations will allow students to use reusable mugs with unlimited access.
“We received a $15,000 grant for sustainability initiative,” Beckstrom said. “What we were awarded were these triple filtered water stations.”
Although the hard work of Housing and Dining Services seems to be paying off, some students disagree and see the measures as ineffective.
“I’ve never see someone use one of the [Chico bags],” said Jaclyn Franklin, a freshman integrative physiology major. “I think it is the students’ responsibility and I don’t see the students taking that responsibility.”
Freshman international affairs major Anna Johnston also saw the bags as an ineffective means of working toward zero-waste.
“I have a Chico bag that I got on the first day but I haven’t really needed to use it yet,” Johnston said. “I have also noticed the display boards with information about recycling, but haven’t seen anyone reading them.”
Housing and Dining Services is also working toward reducing electricity by 5 percent and water by 2 percent this year.
“We are working on a number of strategies in ways that we can reduce energy consumption in Housing and Dining,” Beckstrom said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Brittany Sovine at Brittany.Sovine@colorado.edu.
