Wake Forest teams up with Aramark to promote sustainability

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Recycling. Turning the faucet off when your brush your teeth. Shorter showers. All small ways to promote a better environmental conscience in our day-to-day lives. But a Pit swipe? Surprisingly, yes.

This year, Aramark and the University Dining Commission have collaborated with the Office of Sustainability in an initiative to rethink the college eating experience through a more sustainable dining model and a new push for homegrown local produce. In Wake Forest’s efforts towards a more environmentally responsible campus life, Sustainability Office dining intern Macaeala Seward agrees the cafeterias are the place to start.

“I think the worst habit is by far the amount of food students waste. I’ve seen innumerable people throw away entire plates of food when eating at both the old and new pit,” she said. “Wake students do the easy things. They recycle their water bottles, and most of us carry [a]

Nalgene, but they aren’t conscious of big impacts they can make, such as water conservation, energy conservation and food waste.”

Wake Forest’s Aramark staff has planted the seeds for large-scale changes in both the way we eat and way we dispose of food in the two main dining halls.

Andrew Lee, the Aramark Marketing Coordinator on campus, rattled off a list of ways the kitchen in the North Dining Hall is improving the composting system by collecting post-consumer waste and using a state-of-the-art pulpier to macerate food waste for composting. It is then collected and used by Gallins Foods, an establishment less than 20 miles from the university.

In addition to continual efforts to improve the composting process, Aramark has begun a concerted effort to reduce food waste and address food insecurity by partnering with Campus Kitchen and local non-profits in the Winston-Salem community.