Sustainability
Residential Dining
At CSU Housing & Dining Services, we are committed to being responsible stewards, actively engaging our students, guests, and staff in sustainable practices and programs that preserve the environment, promote social justice, and are financially sound.
Specifically for Residential Dining Services (RDS), our sustainability promise can be seen in these three sustainability priorities.
We aim to reduce food waste on both the production and the consumption-side of our operations. Our chefs develop menus with an eye toward sustainability by thoughtfully re-using ingredients in multiple recipes, keeping close track of inventory, and using data to forecast demand for all items to avoid overproduction.
Trays have been removed from our dining centers to promote mindful dining. Guests are encouraged to take reasonable portions and return for seconds as needed, as leftovers cannot be taken outside the building and thus unnecessarily become waste. All dining to-go products are 100% compostable.
Our Catering team works with the Rams Against Hunger Food Recovery program to allow CSU community members experiencing food insecurity to pick up items leftover from catered CSU events (items that are deemed safe by the U.S. Food Code).
When food can’t be eaten or repurposed, it’s sent to Oscar, our Earth Flow in-vessel composting system located on the CSU Foothills Campus. Through this program, 93% of all food waste is diverted from the landfill.
Ram’s Horn, Braiden, and Durrell Center Dining Centers have pulpers in their kitchens, which mix all the food and paper waste with water, and then grind up the material. This slurry is then taken by pipe to a centrifuge, which removes excess water and recycles it through the system. The pulped organic waste is emptied into collection containers and composted through the Windrow compost system.
These pulpers have helped reduce the waste stream volume by 70% and water consumption by 80% in the dining centers.
Residential Dining Services also works to conserve resources, including water, natural gas, and electricity, and reduce paper waste whenever possible.
This includes thoughtfully and sparingly using gas and electric-powered kitchen appliances, which reduces cost and extends the life of our equipment.
CSU also proudly participates in the Reuse Pass program in many of our carry-out operations. Through this program, students can choose to have To Go selections packed into reusable containers, rather than paper bags. Students then deposit the reusable container into a return bin, and our team washes the containers for re-use.
This program has been a huge success, as CSU was one of the first three universities to surpass 100,000 Reuse Pass usages, and pioneered implementing the program without a late fee, while still maintaining a 95% return rate. On average, each container is used 16 times before being retired, but we have one container that has gone on a very impressive 113 loops!
In 2024 alone, the Durrell Dining Center rented 73,258 reusable containers, which means our customers saved 73,258 single-use containers from the landfill! This is roughly 63% of CSU’s overall impact for the year, which means Durrell also saved roughly 6,616 pounds of waste, 46,460 gallons of water, and 48,435 pounds of GHG CO2e by switching to reusables.
In accordance with Colorado State University’s overall mission as a Land Grant school, Residential Dining Services focuses on sourcing materials and ingredients from in-state as often as we can. We are members of the Colorado Proud community and choose to support local farmers, ranchers, and processors.
We work with Fresh Point Produce, Ram Country Meats (the CSU Department of Agricultural Sciences on-campus butcher), the CSU Horticulture Center, student-managed bee hives, and local businesses like Gib’s NY Bagels and Dazbog Coffee to supply our daily operations and special events.
Customers can also make more sustainable dining choices by choosing vegan or vegetarian meals more often, reducing the portion sizes of meat consumed, and looking for the Colorado Proud, Fair Trade or Equal Exchange, organic, and Rainforest Alliance logos on items available in our marketplaces and minimarkets.
Students interested in learning about and educating their peers about more sustainable choices across all of Housing & Dining Services areas can join the Eco Leaders program.