Waste Minimization

Sun Devil Dining employees play a significant role in ASU’s Zero Waste goals by composting food and paper in all dining locations across the four ASU campuses. This includes food waste and paper napkins left on plates that are returned to the dish belt in the residential dining halls.

We implement a robust commingled recycling program at all locations that accepts glass, metal, paper, cardboard and plastic 1-7. Monthly spot audits reinforce training and identify sources of contamination.

Annual waste audits are conducted at select locations for a full operating day to ensure proper waste diversion practices are followed. These audits allow the Sun Devil Dining Sustainability Department and ASU Zero Waste to determine the waste diversion rate of a dining location/campus and to identify potential opportunities to minimize waste.

Managing food waste in our operations positively impacts our society, economy and the environment. Sun Devil Dining manages food waste through Leanpath. Learn more about leanpath here: leanpath.com/

All used fryer oil is recycled for biodiesel and other industrial purposes.

Trayless Dining encourages customers to take only what they can eat, and reduces food waste by an estimated 1.5 ounces per person each meal. Trayless dining helps prevent nearly 75 pounds of food waste per person each academic year.

The Food Waste Buffet is a high-impact visual demonstration conducted at dining halls each year. Discarded, edible food that is mostly or completely uneaten from a meal period is taken from the dish return and arranged on a buffet-style display. The purpose is to show how much preventable food waste is created and that individual choice has a direct impact.

High quality, unserved food is often left over at the end of the day in our coffee, retail and catering locations. Through a partnership with Arizonan’s for Children, who works to alleviate hardships for children in foster care, this food is collected three times per week and distributed to children in need.

Learn more at www.arizonansforchildren.org

Due to recent restrictions on dining in and capacity limitations, take-out dining has become the default dining for Sun Devil Dining at Arizona State University. This leads to a rise in usage of disposable containers. Choose to Reuse. Sun Devil Dining is expanding our single-use plastic reduction efforts to offer a selection of reusable to-go containers. By Sun Devil Dining providing environmentally preferable to-go containers it reduces waste, conserves resources and materials, elevates education and awareness of disposable products use, and promotes more responsible personal, lifetime habits. Reusable containers can be used hundreds of times, meaning the upstream resources are ultimately much lower over the lifecycle of the product.

We offer a discounted 99 cent fill with a reusable cup at all retail and on-campus market locations to help to decrease single-use disposable waste on campus.

Also, at the on-campus markets, plastic bags have been replaced by recyclable paper and reusable bags.

Reusable to-go containers are offered at the Downtown Phoenix campus to avert a high number of take out boxes from the waste stream.