Sustainability
Living Local
Living Local
Sustainability in the Dining Halls
Bowdoin College Dining Service was recently ranked number one in the nation by Princeton Review for its outstanding food service and is consistently making improvements to stay on top. Bowdoin does much of it's own food processing on site, including running it's own baker and butcher shop, to ensure a high quality. Contributing to the excellent quality is a multitude of vegetarian options and a strong emphasis on local food. A recent switch to naturally raised beef from Wolf Neck Farm, located 10 miles from campus, reduces the cost of transporting large volumes of beef from the Midwest and ensures burgers for the campus that are free of growth hormones, steroids and antibiotics. And you can't get much more local than producing food in Dining Service's own back yard - which is exactly what they have done - incorporating two new herb gardens next to each of the dining halls that will supplement the enormous quantities of herbs used in their cooking.
The Dining Service also supports a student run organic garden a few miles from campus by buying and using their produce. For more information see the webpage for Bowdoin's Organic Garden.
Over the past few years Dining Services has reduced waste removal costs from $18,000 in 1999 to $5,000 in 2002. Some of that reduction is due to an increase in recycling the large tin cans associated with food packaging; installation of a food pulper that extracts water from post consumer food waste; and purchasing items in bulk. The Sustainable Bowdoin composting committee has created a successful composting program to make use of food waste from the Dining Halls. Food scraps that were previously placed in municipal waste are now composted and used to fertilize Bowdoin's fields and gardens. More recently, Dining Service has started deferring waste by donating the majority of its food scraps to a local cow and pig farm, located minutes away in nearby Bowdoin, Maine. Dining Service and farm owner Michael Brooks hope to see the arrangement come "full circle," by negotiating the sale of Bowdoin scrap-fed beef and pork back to the college. Read more here...
Other waste reduction techniques Dining Service has used includes putting unbleached napkins out in baskets on the tables - that way people only grab the amount they need - instead of grabbing multiple napkins while standing in the food serving line. Dining Service also encourages students to use their own mug when taking beverages from the dining hall by giving every first year student their own thermal travel mug and placing signs up in the dining hall that remind students of the benefits of bringing their own mug. A campaign encouraging the campus community to bring their own mug to the dining hall resulted in a decrease in use of 43,000 paper cup during the 2002-2003 fiscal year.