WASTE REDUCTION: Pigging Out off Campus

At one Ohio university�s foodservice department, waste reduction efforts have gone to the hogs.

By Kate Leahy, Senior Associate Editor -- Restaurants and Institutions, 10/29/2008 12:59:00 PM

Nearly every night at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, four 30-gallon bins brimming with melon rinds, vegetable trimmings and stale desserts bypass the dumpster and head instead to two local hog farms where they become meals for hungry pigs.

Nearly every night at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, four 30-gallon bins brimming with pre-consumer, vegetarian food waste, such as melon rinds and vegetable trimmings, bypass the dumpster and head instead to two local hog farms where they become meals for hungry pigs.

Fred Geib, general manager of dining operations at the school, and Matt Portner, director of auxiliary services, started the program (known internally as “Piggy-licious”) in August as part of their efforts to become a more sustainable operation.

Says Portner: “We spend a lot of time and energy buying locally [sourced food], and it just seemed like we weren’t completing the loop.”

While Ohio state regulations can sometimes make compost programs cumbersome to implement, the pig program has been a perfect way for the campus-dining program to reduce its food waste. Two Dining Services employees, Becky Moffet and Sandy Stimpert, haul the scraps home to their own hog farms.

So far, the pig-feeding program has been a success. Combined with recycling efforts, Piggy-licious has helped AU’s dining services cut its waste by one third.

Moffet and Stimpert are seeing the benefits too: They have reduced their hog feed budgets significantly and the college’s castoffs have helped the hogs gain weight faster. “It’s really something to see those pigs. They go crazy at the sight of those yellow bins,” Geib says.

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