Dickinson College
OP-8: Sustainable Dining

Staff of the Dickinson College Farm serve on the board for the local Farmer's on the Square farmer's market and have since its founding.

Additionally, Dickinson College Farm collaborates with Devil’s Den to offer produce and meat to our community using credit, declining balance, or Flex meal plan.

This community opportunity allows Dickinson employees and/or students to buy Farmers on the Square (FOTS) vouchers using their meal plan at the Devil’s Den. This promotes the community to support fresh foods grown by local farmers and receive one $5 token per person to use at the market. Groups of Dickinsonians can increase sustainability efforts by agreeing to cook a meal together with their Farmers on the Square purchases.

The Dickinson College Farm participates in the Carlisle Farmer's Market and has a stand at the market where we sell both pizza from our wood-fired pizza oven (and pizza made with farm organic produce), as well as other farm products.

The Dickinson College Farm has a Campus Support Agriculture (CSA) program which is available to both the college and Carlisle community. Generally, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It is an innovative way to connect local farms and local eaters. The College Farm’s CSA program aims to connect our campus community with fresh and organically grown produce from the College Farm and helps to connect its members to the wider local food system.

For more information on the CSA, go to https://www.dickinson.edu/info/20058/college_farm/2028/campus_supported_agriculture

The College Farm opened a campus farm store called Farm Works in 2022. Students are able to purchase lunch at Farm Works using the Dining meal plan. Farm Works offers freshly prepared soups and salads, sustainable goods, College Farm produce and artisanal products.

For more information on the store operation, please go to: https://www.dickinson.edu/farmworks

Dickinson Dining has restructured menu and line organization to put plant-forward choices first. The vegan and plant-based options are listed first on the menu, serving line signage and are physically placed as the first option that people see when moving through the line. We have vegan options at every meal. Dickinson sponsored a behavior-centered design challenge where student teams worked to identify simple psychological barriers and solutions to eating more plant-based foods. The serving and signage placement was an easy and simple solution that has worked for us and is still in practice. We also are working to identify College Farm products in the Dining Hall for each available offering.

Dickinson has offered distinct vegetarian options at lunch and dinner for nearly two decades. Vegan options are available in the main line of the Dining Hall at every meal. Other snack bars and dining facilities also have complete-protein vegan options at every meal.

All items in all campus dining locations are labeled with allergens or if they come from the local sources. The labels are consistent throughout all venues and are easily recognizable by all students. Campus dining services does have signage in the main dining hall about our college farm, the composting process, food waste reduction, sustainable practices related to food service and consistent sources of local food. Signage is available to highlight sustainability practices surrounding EcoTainers (reusable to-go containers), our reusable mug discount, our compost program and the reduction of single use plastics.

Dickinson does not compete in competition but has internal goals and commitments to reduce food waste. We track daily composting totals and target the collection of 100% pre and post-consumer food waste in our main dining hall. This is tracked by meal. Data of leftover food, and actual post-consumer food waste totals are tracked using software management, so we can improve food management practices.

The Dickinson Dining Hall permanently eliminated trays in Fall 2009. Menu selections, particularly in the snack areas, have also been modified to reduce post-consumer food waste. The College purchased a complex dining software program to track and improve menu and portion control to reduce pre- and post-consumer food waste, and has seen efficiency and improvements in procurement, menu planning and implementation.

Additionally, our Pick Your Portion initiative gives students more control over their servings by allowing them to choose either a taste, half, full, or double portion of a dish. This also reduces food waste as students feel less pressure to take full servings of a dish they want to try.

Dickinson Dining Services donates leftover food to the local Salvation Army kitchen on an as-available/present basis during the year. Additionally, they donate bulk perishable items to Project SHARE (Local community food bank) and to Safe Harbor (local Homeless Shelter) at the end of academic periods when the kitchen will be closed. Donations include dairy items and fresh produce. These items are tracked and managed within Dining Services. The Dickinson College Farm also provides vegetables to Project Share.

All waste cooking oil is taken by RTI (Restaurant Technologies) and converted to biodiesel. All food waste items are pulped and sent to the Dickinson College Farm for compost. All recyclables are separated and sent through our recycler, Penn Waste.

Dickinson Dining Service composts 100% of pre-consumer food waste in all dining locations. The waste is sent through a pulper and placed in sealed buckets. All compost is managed internally within Dickinson and sent to our farm.

Dickinson Dining Service composts 100% of post-consumer food waste (and napkins) in our main campus Dining Hall. All food waste and paper products are prepared for composting with a Hobart WastePro 1200 pulper, which grinds these items into composting-ready material by extracting water and reducing waste volume. The extracted water is then recycled within the pulper system, reducing water usage for the machine. All compost is managed internally within Dickinson and sent to our farm in sealed buckets daily.

All campus dining locations offer and encourage reusable service ware. The main campus Dining Hall only offers reusable service ware; disposables are not available.

Dickinson hosts our own EcoTainer program. EcoTainers are inexpensive, reusable alternatives for takeout containers in retail locations. Dining Services is proud to offer EcoTainers to the campus community as an effort to reduce waste and energy consumption. These containers, supplied by G.E.T. Enterprises, Inc., are made from polypropylene and are exchanged, washed, sanitized, and redistributed by Dining Services for repeated use by students, faculty, and staff.

EcoTainers can be used at all of our dining facilities on campus. While disposable/compostable containers will still be available in retail locations, EcoTainers are required in Grab & Go for entree, soup and salad options. EcoTainers are available for a one time small fee ($6) and are able to be exchanged for the user's tenure at Dickinson. Users do not need to renew each year.

All to-go campus dining locations offer a discount for use of a reusable mug for hot and cold beverages. This offer is available to students, faculty and staff. Over the years, many variations of reusable mugs and bottles have been given out to incoming students to encourage participation in this program.

Dickinson's Human Resources program has a health and wellness program that includes food-related and nutrition programing. Nutrition counseling is available for all Dickinson College faculty and staff members. Nutrition Roundtable discussion groups are provided by a registered dietitian to discuss selected topics and to help answer nutrition questions to assist employees in reaching their health goals. Educational programs are also available to help maintain a healthy, balanced eating pattern to meet our community's nutrition needs, making healthful dietary selections on and off campus and setting realistic nutrition goals and strategies for achieving them. Sustainability plays into the curriculum of all of these programs.

Dickinson offers a Food Studies Certificate to interested students. Food studies is the critical examination of food—the evolution of its procurement, production, consumption and cultural meanings within the contexts of the natural and social sciences and humanities. It's a multidisciplinary field of study that involves and attracts philosophers, historians, scientists, literary and language scholars, artists, sociologists, art historians, anthropologists, nutritionists, psychologists, agriculturalists, economists, artists, film producers and critics, policymakers and consumers.

Complex questions frame food studies: Where does food come from? Why do people eat what they eat? Are current food systems sustainable? What factors will shape the future of food systems, foodways and food culture?

The Dickinson approach to food studies stands to contribute substantially to the development of engaged citizens who are well-equipped to participate thoughtfully and productively in the full range of endeavors that any liberal-arts graduate might consider—in business, academia, nonprofit work, policymaking, law and medicine.

The food studies certificate exemplifies a useful education, one that affects every member of the community on a daily basis by:

Combining courses across the curriculum
Providing hands-on experiential learning opportunities
Interacting with community partners
Integrating the Dickinson College Farm into student learning

More information on Food Studies can be found at https://www.dickinson.edu/homepage/852/food_studies_overview

Dickinson’s Dining Hall, an all-you-care-to-eat cafeteria-style facility that serves the campus community, including 2,400 students, has been named a 3-Star Certified Green Restaurant by the Green Restaurant Association. The distinction recognizes Dickinson’s commitment to sustainable operations and food sourcing.

Dining Services works to be an industry trendsetter in environmental sustainability. Our continual process enhancements--including local purchasing, fair trade purchasing, waste reduction, composting program, and lowered energy consumption--align with Dickinson's overall sustainable message.

Dickinson has five retail eateries on campus, catering services and a main Dining Hall, which offers 20 stations, a 30-item salad bar, deli bar, two made-from-scratch soup offerings and three separate entrées for lunch and dinner. Vegetarian, vegan, organic non-GMO cereal, gluten-free and kosher entrees also are available.