students at UNC getting food at Holmes Dining Hall

Article

February 13, 2025

Written by student-writer Greg Egbert | Translated by Carlos José Pérez Sámano

Turning a New LEAF with Composting

Reduciendo el desperdicio a través de la composta

UNC is working to save multiple tons of food waste per year.

UNC está comprometida en reducir varias toneladas al año de basura relacionada con la comida.

Universities across the country are adopting new policies and working toward developing a more sustainable future, prioritizing a cleaner and more environmentally friendly campus. The University of Northern Colorado (UNC) is no stranger to these practices or policies.  

UNC is home to Student LEAF, which stands for Student Leadership for Environmental Action Fund. Founded in 2012, the members are dedicated to empowering students to transform the campus community toward a sustainable future that students, faculty and staff can be a part of.

“It’s all student-driven and student-led,” said President of Student LEAF and Environmental Science junior Lorayne Aguinaldo. “We do a lot of projects, including providing the trash and recycling cans around campus with labels on them to determine what kinds of trash to put in, the water bottle fillers and the big fans in the rec center.” 

Headshot of Lorayne Aguinaldo.

Aguinaldo has been hard at work this year with the most recent project the fund is sponsoring, composting and reducing the university’s food waste.  

Food waste is a growing problem in the United States, estimated to be around 30-40% of the total food supply according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This wasting can occur at any stage of the production and supply chain, from improper storage, farmers discarding blemished products or excess consumption and throwing away uneaten food.  

To combat this problem, Aguinaldo, her fellow Student LEAF members and UNC’s Dining Services are working with a third-party company to limit unfinished or spoiled portions of food being tossed every day. They connected with a composting service based in Fort Collins called Compost Queen, a woman-owned and operated business since 2018.

Two composting bins sitting outside a building.
Some of the composting bins from Compost Queen sitting outside Holmes Dining Hall

“We had a meeting with Compost Queen, they’ve expanded their facilities to take on larger clients like universities and large restaurants,” said Aguinaldo. 

During their first meeting, Aguinaldo learned about what the composting process would look like for UNC and what kind of impact it would have on the environment.  

On the total greenhouse gas footprint, Aguinaldo was told 1 ton of food waste composed would cut back on 4.5 metric tons of CO2, compared to if it was not composted. That is the equivalent amount of CO2 that a single passenger vehicle would produce in a year. With a rough estimate and numbers provided by other similarly sized operations, UNC has around 4.5 tons of food waste, which has the potential to quadruple the amount of CO2 saved from entering the atmosphere.  

She explained how streamlined the composting service is within the university, operating mostly on the back end of Holmes Dining Hall. 

“They have a pickup service with these large trucks and really large bins that have a liner of compostable materials inside of them,” Aguinaldo said. “You fill up the bins throughout the week, and on Fridays they come and pick the whole bin up and replace it for a completely new one, all cleaned out and with a fresh liner.” 

Special containment procedures are required for composting, complete with a biodegradable liner to keep the bins clean. Almost all food scraps can be composted, including meat, bones, rinds and grains. If these items are free from contaminates like plastics or foils, they’re safe to turn into compost. 

The program was officially adopted by Holmes Dining Hall at the end of January and has been running successfully ever since.  

“I truly believe that there’s a cycle in food, and so I’m completing the cycle, which is composting,” said Meagan Johnson, Director of UNC Dining Services by Sodexo. “To me personally, I hate seeing food going to waste.” 

This new composting project is one of the many Dining Services’ sustainability efforts on campus. An example that kickstarted these practices is the reusable green to-go meal containers offered at the dining halls on campus. 

Before the LEAF fund pitched the idea back in 2018, the Holmes and Tobey-Kendel dining halls used white, single-use meal containers for leftovers. The old containers were often improperly disposed of, leading to increased amounts of waste.  

“That was a LEAF pilot project initially, and then it was so successful that Dining Services took over the expenses for that,” Aguinaldo said. 

LEAF and Dining Services have been working together on several other projects since then. Twice every semester, Holmes Dining Hall holds a “Weigh the Weight” week, where the total amount of food waste is measured and shown to students.  

“When students are dining, they go to multiple food lines, take three or four different food items, and then don’t eat it all,” Johnson said. “This is a way for us to show students how quickly the amount of food waste can add up.” 

Dining Services has also replaced inefficient dishwashers in Holmes — reducing the amount of water used from 400 gallons to 58 gallons — installed LED lights in the kitchen areas, developed training for kitchen staff to reduce food byproducts and even reworked the menu to be more environmentally conscious. 

“We’re working towards trying to make sure that 35% of our menu is sustainable or meatless,” Johnson said. “Those foods tend to be 30-40% less carbon monoxide producing as well as healthier.” 

Johnson is very optimistic knowing that students like Aguinaldo are pushing for sustainable practices and knows that these practices are nowhere near done. The latest effort Dining Services is implementing is using Bear Pantry’s remodeled storage kitchen to continue being environmentally conscious.  

In the design plans, a prep kitchen was built in the Bear Pantry’s new location on the second floor of the University Center to process leftovers from other retail dining outlets nearby. Flash freezers will be used to preserve the leftovers, which will now include Dining Services’ leftovers, and the items will be donated directly to the Bear Pantry for students to take. 

“We have partnerships with Pepsi that’s helping them bring products from their warehouses on delivery days, in case they can’t get rid of stuff, so that we can give that back to students as well,” Johnson said.  

As for Aguinaldo, her career in sustainable practices is just beginning. Her Environmental Sciences major is helping her expand her passion for sustainability long after she graduates.  

“Before doing LEAF, I kind of wanted to be an environmental policy consultant or an environmental educator,” Aguinaldo said. “But I’ve learned I enjoy the outreach aspect of Student LEAF, the networking, connection and talking to different kinds of people. This is what I want to do after I’m done with my degree.” 

All UNC students help fund Student LEAF. Each semester, students pay a $10 charge toward the student organization, which allows Student LEAF to take on sustainability projects around campus. 

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College

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