A unique program has reduced the distance from farm-to-table on campus to just 924 metres, according to Natalie Vasilivetsky, campus sustainability coordinator, at a July 18 event where she told the program’s history.
Vasilivetsky described how in 2012, Carolyn Chan, a volunteer at the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming [1](GCUOF), realized that the University did not have a composting program. She approached William’s Cafe, a coffee shop in McLaughlin Library at the time, and asked them for their coffee grinds. She filled a bucket and took them to the GCUOF office and asked Martha Gay Scroggins, the lead farmer, if they could start one through the sustainability office.
In 2013, Vasilivetsky was asked to mobilize students to volunteer their time to collect coffee grinds across campus and bring them to a central location. Over 40 people stepped up.
“I was overwhelmed by the amazing student activism here on campus,” said Vasilivetsky, “we [had] more students than locations!”
Thanks to the enthusiastic response, the program was able to expand to every single coffee shop on campus.
Vasilivetsky wondered if they could go for something bigger. She targeted Creelman Hall, OVC, Second Cup and, finally, the entire UC cafeteria. She aproached the chefs in the UC to let them know what she and her team would need, and was surprised to see that there was very little food waste coming out of the kitchen. The chefs were already on board with reducing waste, training their staff in how to prepare food as efficiently as possible. Despite this, in just one winter semester over 50,000 kilograms of waste was diverted from landfills to the student-run farm.
During this time, Vasilivetsky was also meeting with Hospitality Services. Once they found out that all the food provided by GCUOF was being produced on campus, they requested a tour of the farm. While the tour was going on, head chef Vijay Nair had a thought.
“Why aren’t we buying this stuff?” Vasilivetsky recalls him saying.
On the spot, Nair immediately bought all the watermelons that were available. Eventually, that became an arrangement to buy everything the farm was producing.
Vasilivetsky was amazed.
“We had started our very own circular food economy,” she said, referring to a system where food is purchased and the waste created when preparing the food for consumption is returned to the original farm to become a resource used to grow more food.
Vasilivetsky didn’t want to stop there.
“There are people that work on campus eight hours a day producing food scraps that had to deal with the ethical quandary of putting them in the garbage can. Suddenly, they … could bring them to an organic farm.”
She reached out to offices all over campus, installing compost bins and collecting food waste for use on the farm. Now, they maintain a sustainable food economy where the farm-to-table distance is less than a kilometre.
When asked about her plans for the future, Vasilivetsky shared that come September, students will be able to get in on the circular food economy thanks to a renovation in Peter Clark Hall that will allow students to compost their food scraps. This new program will act as a pilot before being expanded to include Creelman Hall and hopefully, much like the collection of coffee grinds seven years ago, across all of campus.