Dining Services continues to grow its sustainability efforts
On a summer day, employees tend produce at Homefield Farm for a fall harvest. Photo by Darren Van Dyke for Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech Dining Services had another bountiful harvest from its continuing sustainability initiatives, including waste management, food diversion, composting, and Homefield Farm harvests.
“Dining Services at Virginia Tech is dedicated to creating a sustainable dining experience,” said Emily Williams, assistant director of sustainability for dining and housing. “We do this by advocating for locally sourced ingredients, executing diligent waste management, and providing our campus community with environmentally conscious programs.”
A place for waste
Dining Services continually updates its management processes to implement best practices across its waste streams.
In 2024 at Southgate Center, the central warehouse, bakery, and food production hub, a biodigester was introduced that turns waste into gray water through aerobic digestion. The gray water goes safely into the regular wastewater system. The biodigester helped divert over 60,000 pounds of waste from the landfill.
Dining Services also improved its resource efficiency through food diversion with over 11,000 pounds of unserved food diverted to Campus Kitchen this past spring. Dining Services partners with VT Engage, which send volunteers a few times a week to collect unserved food from dining halls. Campus Kitchen then distributes the surplus food to hunger relief agencies in the New River Valley.
Serving up the whole package
By partnering with Topanga, Dining Services introduced a program to track the reusable to-go containers called ReusePass. Working simliar to a library checkout system, students, faculty, staff, and visitors can use the containers free of charge if they are returned within three days. This way, the containers are tracked and sorted, preventing them from ending up in landfills.
Success with the tracking system continues to steadily rise. The return rate increased 470 percent from pre-pilot, for a 96 percent return rate this past spring. Efforts from the traceable reuse system helped save over 30,000 compostable clamshells from entering the landfill stream so far this year.
Composting initiatives are another focus, particularly through compostable packaging. Dining Services aims to reduce single-use plastics by offering compostable alternatives for clamshell containers, bowls, utensils, cups, napkins, and other food service wares. All meals from Perry Place's eight venues are served in compostable containers, making the newest dining center on the Blacksburg campus its most compost-ready.
Compostable clamshell containers used at Dining Centers all over campus. Photo by Darren Van Dyke for Virginia Tech.
There's no place like home
Homefield Farm continues to grow and send produce to all dining centers, giving students access to fresh, certified organic ingredients and food. Chefs from each center collaborate with Williams and a representative from Southgate Center to identify items they'd like to incorporate into their menus for the next season.
Then, they coordinate with Homefield management team members, who adjust based on environmental factors, labor, and land availability. Homefield Farm holds farm stand events in the fall where anyone in the campus community can purchase their desired produce.
This spring, over 30 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers were prepared at Homefield to be harvested, grown from over 20,000 seedlings transplanted to the farm. Plus, over 120 organic seedlings were handed out to students during Earth Week.
Homefield Farm employees fill up buckets of fresh produce to distribute to dining centers on campus. Photo by Darren Van Dyke for Virginia Tech.
As a partnership among Dining Services, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Homefield Farm takes a lot of coordination. The National Association of College and University Food Services recognized that effort with a Gold Sustainability Award for sustainable procurement. This achievement fuels Dining Services’ mission to create sustainable processes that are accessible and impactful.
“Homefield is a partnership and focuses heavily on collaborations. All the produce from the farm is organic and goes straight to dining services,” said Williams. “It’s super exciting to have those efforts and that work recognized.”
