ND Energy, Campus Dining, and the Office of Sustainability are teaming up to promote the awareness of food waste as a climate change issue and to encourage students to reduce their food waste in the dining halls. To kick off this campaign, two Weigh the Waste Nights will be held in the dining halls to inform students about the Grind2Energy system that Notre Dame uses to convert food waste into clean, renewable energy.
Volunteers will be on hand to assist diners through the process of properly returning their leftover food, which will then be weighed, to the dish line. The amount of food waste will be tracked throughout the academic year with the goal of reducing the volume of surplus food at the source. The collected food waste is ground up into a slurry and transported to the Homestead Dairy Farm in Plymouth, Indiana. At the farm, a digester converts the slurry into biogas to produce electricity. The liquid byproducts from the process are used as fertilizer, while the solid byproducts are used as bedding for the cows.
Students interested in volunteering for this event can sign up here.
Originally published at energy.nd.edu.