A quick glance into the UVA dining halls reveals steaming platters of classic foods: chicken, pizza, burgers, salad. Yet upon closer examination, these same meals pile up at the dish return and trash bins as students dispose of their unfinished meals.
This is a typical scene at Runk Dining Hall on a Tuesday night. It is one of the three dining halls on Grounds that offer options from comfort foods to international cuisines—buffet style. But many of these meals end up unfinished, dumped into the waste bins, contributing to a nation-wide issue: each year, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in the US, according to Feeding America [1].
UVA Dine offers three “all-you-care-to-eat” style dining halls which can be accessed through “meal swipes” in addition to 30 “on-the-go” dining locations where students can use “meal exchanges” and “flex dollars” [2].
These dining options are easily accessible to all UVA students but first-years are the primary consumers. All first-year students are required to purchase the all-access meal plan—providing students with unlimited meal swipes each semester—which means roughly 4,000 students each year are guaranteed to regularly eat on Grounds.
To accommodate the needs of these students, UVA Dine takes into account various dietary restrictions and preferences. The Copper Hood, a station in dining halls, prepares food avoiding the top 9 allergens through an allergen-free kitchen. Kosher food prepared by UVA's Brody Jewish Center is available at residential dining halls, and halal dining options are available at Za'atar and the Halal Kitchen food truck.
However, after accommodating various dietary needs and preferences, UVA Dine faces challenges predicting how much food to prepare, including which dishes they will prefer and the amount the average student will eat.
“It is nearly impossible to predict exactly the right amount of food to prepare each day”, said Jared Hardy, a marketing manager at UVA Dine. But to help better prepare, UVA Dine teams are trained in menu preparation, production planning, and portion control to predict volume counts throughout the semester.
Still, one of the biggest challenges UVA dine faces is balancing sustainability with student preferences, according to Elizabeth Dukes, a sustainable footprint analyst for UVA sustainability. This notion was echoed through a public comment made during a Student Council general body meeting. Sarah Goraya, the outreach chair for the Muslim Student Association noted how dietary needs such as food for iftars do not sufficiently meet the needs and preferences of students.
In her public comment, Goraya noted that meals provided through Grubhub have often been confusing to order and not halal, and thus lead to food waste because they do not meet the needs of Muslim students.
Small portion sizes and non-nutritious halal options provided by the University also contribute to the need for Iftar funding according to Yassamine Kamal, an undergraduate representative of the College of Arts & Sciences. UVA Dine has shown lower interest in continuing Grubhub Ramadan meals because of the resulting food waste.
Kamal and Goraya are not alone in their concerns about food waste and dietary needs. Waste in various dining locations can also be heightened due to loss of control over the amount of food students get; it is difficult for staff members to predict student portion preferences.
Rachael Sim, a first-year student in the College of Arts & Sciences, uses on-grounds dining because of its accessibility. “Everyone can see how much food waste there is, especially with how much food kids leave on their plates,” Sim said. “At dining halls it depends who is serving you. Sometimes it's not enough and at other places it's a lot more.”
Tejas Charaipotra, another first-year student in the College of Arts & Sciences, attributes the propensity for waste to the structure of the all-access dining plan. “I understand why a student would waste food because it's unlimited,” Charaipotra said. “They don't really proportion as well as you'd hope.”
To meet UVA’s zero waste efforts, the University has made some attempts to address this issue.
In dining halls, items are considered food waste when they are inedible, and edible food resulting from overproduction is considered excess food. Excess food is picked up by FoodAssist and donated to the UVA Food Pantry and the Charlottesville community, explained Marketing Manager Jared Hardy. In 2022, 1,160 pounds of food were donated to the UVA Community Food Pantry. Additionally, 650.9lbs of food from Runk Dining Hall was donated to the local community.
UVA Sustainability has also pushed to move away from meat with higher environmental footprints, such as beef by offering proteins like chicken and vegetables. For example, dining options at Runk include a beef burger patty that is now mixed with mushrooms. “As we transition to plant forward or reduced-meat meals, it's improving our university footprint,” said Elizabeth Dukes. Dukes points out that as we serve more students, the total weight of food has gone up but total nitrogen footprint has gone down.
The University also invests in composting efforts to combat waste. “By composting, we divert food waste from the landfill, and thus prevent methane emissions resulting from food waste being sent to the landfill,” Hardy said.
Dukes explains that on campus, there are both front-of-house composting that relies on the efforts of students, as well as back-of-house composting partnerships with Black Bear Composting.
However, composting comes with challenges such as contamination. When contamination occurs, the whole batch has to be thrown out.
Moreover, composting also has its limitations. “You can't get to net zero unless you stop feeding people,” Dukes said.
Thus, it is important for students and staff to collaborate with the University's efforts. For example, students can choose to eat more plant based meals and make sure they only take food they plan to eat. UVA initiatives such as the N-print project allow students to calculate their own nitrogen footprint by visiting n-print.org/YourNFootprint.
1. Food waste in America. (n.d.). Feeding America. Retrieved November 9, 2023, from https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/reduce-food-waste.
2. Meal plan FAQ. (n.d.). University of Virginia. Retrieved November 19, 2023, from https://virginia.campusdish.com/en/mealplanfaq/.