Johnson County Community College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

At all-staff breakfasts beginning in Fall 2015, sustainability interns wore matching “Dirt Brewers” t-shirts and stood by composting bins to collect compostable service ware and food waste from attendees, leading to scores of conversations between interns and staff about campus food waste and the importance of our composting program. Center for Sustainability staff and interns developed creative and innovative interactive displays depicting the composting program as a closed loop system and talked with colleagues about where food waste on campus goes. An intern planned and assembled ‘upcycled’ table centerpieces using cloth napkins, mirrors, and bottles recovered from the dining services and glass recycling waste streams. Flowers from campus gardens and the farm and using cut glass bottles as herb planters added visual appeal, while including a “Did you know?” trivia card explained some aspect of the recycling or composting process. The herb plants became prizes during a tabling event on the composting system the next day, where interns and staff presented information and took questions from attendees.

The zero waste breakfasts serve over 1200 diners per event and divert 100% of post-consumer waste from landfill.

Beginning in 2013 and continuing semi-annually since, several dozen students, faculty, staff, and community volunteers worked together to source a campus farm lunch from the campus' Open Petal Farm. The project offers student employees in dining services, members of the broader campus community, and external stakeholders many opportunities for informal education and enrichment. Participants in the harvest have an opportunity to learn more about sustainable agriculture and the occasionally 'unique' vegetables raised by specialty growers. In dining services, both student and regular employees get to work with produce at the height of freshness grown and delivered in ways not immediately familiar to food service workers who may be accustomed to working with vegetables requiring considerably less preparation. Students also plan the menu for the day, order and direct preparation, and produce recipes that are shared after the event with the campus community.

Interest in the Farm Lunch has increased steadily since its first offering. In our first semester, we fed 50 diners, and in the most recent year's offerings, we served 250 in spring and fall combined. Participants' interest both in the event and in getting copies of the recipes following has increased steadily. Post-lunch recipe posts on Center social media accounts generate the most engagement of any posts we share, by a factor of three.

Since 2015, the Center for Sustainability has offered post-Halloween pumpkin drop off points to the campus community. Pumpkins are broken up and composted with our regular food waste.