Kitchen and Dining Hall Composting

Kitchen Composting

Kitchen composting was launched as a pilot project at Creelman Hall in October 2017. With cooperation and support from Hospitality Services staff, all back-of-house organic waste was delivered to the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming (GCUOF) for composting. At present, the program has expanded to include all dining locations on campus, and the annual volume of diverted food waste has more than tripled. For the F20/W21 semesters, compost is received by the City of Guelph instead of the GCUOF, but we continue to pick it up from all kitchen locations open during COVID-19.

The composting program is run by student employees and has had tremendous success in recent years. During the F19/W20 semesters, our kitchen compost program successfully diverted over 100 000 kg of food waste from landfills.

 

Two kitchen staff pose with a compost bin.

 


Front-Of-House Cafeteria Composting

In Winter 2020, we added a compost stream to the University Centre cafeteria. We are currently gathering more data to improve this program and expand to other locations in 2020.

 


The following coffee shops and kitchens are currently participating in our composting programs (Coffee To Compost or Kitchen composting):

  • University Centre – Level Zero Kitchen
  • University Centre - Cafeteria 
  • Catering Services
  • Coffee Services
  • OVC Cafeteria Kitchen
  • Gryph's Sports Lounge Kitchen
  • Creelman Hall Kitchen
  • Brass Taps Kitchen
  • Mountain Hall Kitchen
  • Prairie Hall Kitchen
  • Lennox-Addington Cafeteria Kitchen
  • PJ's Restaurant in the Atrium
  • The Bullring
  • Second Cup – College and Gordon
  • Windows Coffee Shop – Mountain Residence
  • Pages Coffee House – MacNaughton
  • The Daily Grind – University Centre
  • Second Cup – Science Complex
  • Mack's – Mackinnon
  • Starbucks – Lennox-Addington
  • Starbucks – University Centre
  • Starbucks – Library
  • Tim Hortons – Thornbrough
  • Tim Hortons – Athletic Centre
  • Booster Juice – Athletic Centre
  • Childcare and Learning Centre Kitchen
  • Tim Hortons – University Centre
  • Cutten Fields Golf Club Kitchen

     

To find out more about our circular food economy here on campus see the annual organics report linked below.