What’s New

BIG NEWS!

Fountain Dining Hall unveiled a new sustainability mural on its dish return wall, illustrating NC State Dining’s closed-loop system. Food scraps from the dining hall are composted at NC State’s Compost Facility and Research Cooperative, the compost nourishes crops at the Agroecology Education Farm, and the farm’s fresh produce is delivered back to campus dining halls.

University Towers staff (our newest dining hall) has shown a strong commitment to waste reduction this semester. They participated in summer waste reduction training and worked with a Campus as a Classroom graphics intern to create educational slides for students, designed in partnership with Waste Reduction and Recycling.

 

Sustainability Committee

Throughout the fall 2024 semester, the Dining Sustainability Committee has continued to discuss and plan for ways NC State Dining can put sustainability at the forefront of operations. Here are a few updates on what the committee has been up to recently:

  • Discussion topics
    • Menus of Change
    • Humane Society
    • Food recovery initiatives
    • Fountain Dining Hall’s new dish wall, oriented around the closed-loop cycle of campus dining, the compost center, and the Agroecology farm
    • Possibilities for an NCSU farmer’s market day
  • Decisions & actions
    • Helped to direct Coke Sustainability Fund
    • Guided projects for two Campus as a Classroom interns: one focused on sustainability marketing and the other on waste reduction
    • Began discussing logistics for Farm Feast, the annual spring meal featuring locally-grown items 
    • Planned sustainability reporting with the Sustainability Office and explored independent reporting for NC State Dining
    • Met with Coke Waste Audit team 
    • Created framework to update NC State Dining’s sustainability webpage

 

Partnerships

  • University Sustainability Office runs the Campus as a Classroom sustainability internship program, under which two interns have been working for the fall 2024 semester. Haley Pierce, the Dining Sustainability Marketing intern and Nikki Nguyen, the Dining Waste Reduction intern have worked on sustainability reporting, website updates, educational tabling and social media. 

 

  • Waste Reduction and Recycling: NC State Dining has strengthened its partnership with WRR through monthly check-ins. The new Watch Our Waste Wednesday tabling initiative is a collaboration between Dining’s sustainability interns and WRR’s interns to educate students about proper waste sorting and waste reduction on campus and through Dining. 

  • Agroecology Education Farm: As part of a long-term partnership, The Agroecology Education Farm provides over 5,000 pounds of produce to the Dining halls every year. 

  • Farmer Foodshare: NC State Dining sources fresh produce weekly from Farmer Foodshare’s network of North Carolina farms and is a highlight at Pick Local Fridays.
  • Student Organizations: Dining has collaborated with the Sustainability Stewards and supported their programs this fall by advertising for a mini-mart and providing black bean burgers for a sustainable grill-out. NC State Dining hosts the Dining Diplomats, a nutrition-related internship that includes a guest speaker session with the sustainability department, a tour of the Agroecology Farm, and a behind-the-scenes tour of a dining hall and dish return area. 

 

Readings

Check out these articles sourced from NC State Dining and some of our campus partners!

 

Staff Member Highlight

Discover how Christine Gift, Unit Manager of Port City Java at Park Shops, leads by example—reducing waste, maximizing efficiency, and inspiring her team to embrace sustainable practices.

[Read the full interview here.]

 

Sustainability-Focused Events

Fall 2024 has been full of fun sustainability-related events! Here are some NC State Dining favorites from the past few months. 

  • Local Fridays: Every Friday, North Carolina produce is featured, from Farmer Foodshare’s network of farms or the Agroecology Education farm. Additionally, other local vendors are highlighted on a rotation: Carolina Classics Catfish, Shipley Beef, and Chandler Foods.
  • All-Carolinas Meal, September 5: The All-Carolinas meal was a hit this year! The Belltower Band set the mood with exciting music, and attendees enjoyed NC classics, local vendors, and informational tables. Peach ice cream with peaches from the Sandhills Research Station Peach Farm was a fan favorite.
  • Plant Forward Meal, October 1: NC State dining featured new plant-based options at Clark and Fountain in honor of World Vegetarian Day. Clark served sustainably sourced Kelp meatballs and kelp burgers, along with education about the benefits of kelp. Fountain Dining Hall partnered with Monsoon Kitchens and Stonefire to highlight plant-forward Indian cuisine and crispy lentil chalupas, respectively. One of Dining’s sustainability interns held an educational table about the greenhouse gas footprints of different food items. 
  • Seafood Day, October 23: NC State Dining partnered with Slade Gorton to highlight sustainable seafood at University Towers Dining Hall. Featured items included MSC Certified Cracker Cod, Coconut Shrimp, and Scallop Medallions developed by NC State Food Science Department.
  • Local Apple Week, October 19–25: Dining halls spent a week emphasizing the importance of a local food system by highlighting apples from North Carolina farms.  Students could also learn about the closed loop of composting on campus through a Where does my apple core go? poster.