In April, Emory food-service staff got their hands dirty (literally) at Dobbs Common Table (DCT) while putting on their Weigh the Waste Campaign. A team from Bon Appétit, Emory’s food-service management provider, used hands-on waste sorting and student surveys to gather actionable data while engaging with students on the important and often overlooked issue of on-campus food waste.
The Bon Appétit team set up shop directly in front of the dish return at Dobbs Common Table for three lunchtime-rush hours on April 30th. Between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM team members sorted the waste on each plate, weighed the leftovers in each category, and surveyed each diner to better understand their dining choices.
Of the 296 total diners who participated in the campaign, 39% had a clean plate, while 61% contributed to a total of 132.6 pounds of edible food waste, 15 pounds of non-edible food waste (like fruit peels and cores), and 10 pounds of non-food waste (like napkins and wrappers). That’s approximately 110 meals worth of edible food wasted across three hours of waste-weighing and surveying.
After staff weighed the food waste, they surveyed diners to better understand why they didn’t finish their food. When asked why they left food waste, 59% of diners did not like the food, 18% ran out of time to eat, 26% were served too much by dining hall staff, and 56% simply took too much (because participants were able to select more than one reason, there is overlap between these groups, and the listed percentages do not add to 100%).
“Students really enjoyed the activity and found it to be a powerful way to visualize just how much food is wasted in our dining hall,” said Chau Nguyen, Marketing Coordinator at Bon Appétit, “Many felt proud approaching us with clean plates, knowing they had nothing to scrape—an encouraging reminder that every small action counts.”
DCT diners aren’t the only ones leaving behind food waste. Up to 40% of the United States’ food supply—valued at hundreds of billions of dollars—goes unsold or uneaten each year. Food waste, and interventions designed to curtail it, can occur at every stage of the food supply chain including farms, grocery stores, kitchens, campus dining halls, and each of our plates. While billions of pounds of food are sent to landfills in the United States every year, over 40 million Americans face food insecurity annually.
Bon Appétit plans to use the data they collected through the Weigh the Waste Campaign to tackle this problem on campus. This new information can steer food waste reduction strategies, including enhancing menu planning based on student feedback, educating students on portion sizing choices, and exploring strategies to reduce edible waste throughout Emory Dining operations.
Bon Appétit and Emory Dining already work to reduce food waste and bolster campus sustainability. Staff optimize dining operations with Bon Appétit’s Waste Not app, created in 2021 to help chefs track kitchen food waste. On the client end, Emory can track Bon Appétit’s sustainability progress through an online Food Standards Dashboard to better understand the nutrition, climate change impact, and sourcing of Emory’s dining hall food.
All Bon Appétit cafes are also required to regularly donate food, working with local partners to divert untouched food to those experiencing food insecurity. One partner is Slow Food Emory, a student organization that recovers untouched dining hall food for redistribution to campus community members. By minimizing the amount of excess food taken at mealtimes, DCT diners can increase the proportion of untouched food waste that can be diverted to food-insecure community members.
“At Bon Appétit and Emory Dining, sustainability is a core value,” Nguyen explained, “The Weigh the Waste campaign is an important part of that mission. It helps raise awareness among students about the true impact of uneaten food—not just on the environment, but also on food systems, labor, and resources.”
Weigh the Waste was one campaign in a continual effort toward understanding DCT’s post-consumer food waste, promoting sustainable food systems, and educating students on the impacts of their dining choices. Food waste reduction aligns with the many other sustainable dining efforts at Emory University and Emory Healthcare, including pre- and post-consumer composting, multi-stream recycling of non-food waste, leftover tracking, sustainable and local sourcing, and donation of prepared foods. Through these programs, Bon Appétit and Emory Dining are working to create a better food future for the Emory Community—one plate at a time.
Any students, faculty, or staff who are experiencing food insecurity on campus should explore food resources provided by Emory Dining, and all community members can learn more about sustainable food initiatives at Emory through Emory’s Office of Sustainability Initiatives website.