By ESTHER YU
esther@du2.byu.edu
There's a lot more recycling services than may be apparent in BYU's dining centers: the Cannon Center, the Morris Center and the Cougereat Food Court as well as through other food services like catering services and vending machines.
Dining services does its best not to waste any food, beginning by preparing just enough food that there is a minimal amount of leftovers at the end of each day.
This is especially possible in the Cougareat Food Court where food is cooked in batches so it is easy to prevent cooking more food than students will eat, said P.J. (Paul Johnson), assistant director of dining services.
However, any remaining food is re-used when possible. If not re-served, they are recycled as fertilizer and animal feed or given to local food care banks, according to Dean Wright, director of dining services.
Leftover food is carefully preserved to be used the next day. It is cooled down as quickly as possible according to instructions on a nationally written food safe food handling program by Hazard Analyses Critical Control Point, Wright said.
The food is reheated the next day unless it has been determined as having been in the danger zone, in which case it is thrown away.
'We reheat the food the next day as quickly as possible and put the food out in the exact same format as it was originally, so we don't try to rework it or hide it,' Wright said.
Because of the care dining services takes to have as little leftover food as possible, the only food remaining tends to be that which has gone bad and cannot still be eaten, or food which must be served during the weekend when there are few students around to eat it. This is vending machine food.
Food close to expiration dates are then given to local food banks, especially the Food and Care Coalition since they are essentially the only food bank which can accept prepared foods, said Stephen Nyman, assistant director of food services.
'We get a pretty good amount of food from BYU, and we certainly appreciate them,' said Brent Crane, the executive director of the Food and Care Coalition.
Crane said BYU gives them food from BYU vending, BYU catering, the dairy, Especially for Youth meals and the Benson food lab. Last year, BYU vending donated $9,600 worth of food while BYU dining services donated $993 worth of food. In total, BYU contributed to about 5.3 percent of the Food and Care Coalition's non-cash contributions.
But even food gone bad or food students throw into trash cans manage to avoid the dumpster in most cases. This is because almost anything can go down the four pulpers BYU bought in the last four years. BYU has one of the first pulpers used in the country.
Its pulpers take nearly all the moisture out of foods and pulp them, along with cardboard, into a mulch which is used on BYU grounds as a fertilizer, Wright said. About 3 percent to 5 percent of food is rendered unusable and put down the pulpers each day in each of the dining centers, Wright said.
Foam is one of the few leftover parts of a meal which cannot be recycled through the pulper, P.J. said. This is the reason much of the foam BYU uses has been substituted with a more expensive material which is recyclable.
The decision to purchase pulpers included BYU dining services, BYU physical facilities, BYU utilities and BYU grounds, said Irmaleda Anderson, who was the executive secretary of dining services at the time the pulpers were purchased. It benefitted many groups, she said.
The pulpers help Provo City with reducing the amount of water going to the sewer lines because of the way the water was recycled through the system, it provides fertilizer for BYU grounds and reduces hauling and tipping fees at the disposal plant, among other things, Nyman said.
It is considered by many of those involved with its use as an immense savings for the university. It compresses everything into a compact area so that the amount going into landfills was reduced by eight times when they began using the pulper, Anderson said.
'We used to empty our dumpsters daily and now we empty them once or twice a week,' Nyman said.
BYU has received recognition from the National Association of College and University Food Services, which they are a part of, for not wasting food and handling leftovers in a good way, Wright said. It's a system that those who are a part of are proud of.
'We are committed to it ... it's not so much goodwill for the public as that we think it is right. We are not succumbing to outside pressure but putting our own values on it, and that excites me,' P.J. said.
Careful use of foods so that there are few leftovers and remaining leftovers are recycled for feeding more students or taking care of BYU grounds help with costs, but BYU seems to win both economically and environmentally when it comes to how the various parts of dining services use their food.