Sustainable Dining
Students planting crops at Homefield Farm. Photo by Darren Van Dyke for Virginia Tech.
We believe in a sustainable future for Virginia Tech.
At Dining Services, sustainability is a core part of our mission. Our vision for sustainable campus dining is part of how we design our dining centers, source our ingredients, and our commitment to recycling and composting programs. We believe our initiatives positively impact our Blacksburg campus and the broader community.
Our Dining Centers work to limit the amount of waste sent to landfills in several ways. Food waste from back and front of house operations is diverted to a Virginia composting facility that converts it to specialty soils for farming and landscaping. Dining Services’ recycling initiatives assists the broader campus effort to maintain a 40% recycling rate on campus.
The centerpiece of our local dining initiative is Homefield Farm, which is a partnership between Dining Services, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. The 12-acre, organic operation is student-driven and supplies dining centers with more than 45,000 pounds of fresh produce, along with running a farm stand on campus each fall.
Our “R2G” program started in 2010 at the request of our students. The green, to-go meal containers are free to use and are returned for cleaning and reuse, keeping unnecessary food packaging out of landfills.
Local and Sustainable Sourcing:
Virginia Tech Dining Services strives to support campus-sourced ingredients produced by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
A picture of tomatoes in Homefield Farm. Photo by Darren Van Dyke for Virginia Tech.
