Food & Dining
Sustainability at Southern Oregon University
SOU is committed to improving managing food sustainably through the whole food system as well as promoting sustainable dining practices. To find out more about sustainability at SOU Dining, please visit here.
The SOU Student Food Pantry is committed to providing students with food and other necessities to alleviate the effects of hunger and poverty. For more information, please visit here.
The Farm at Southern Oregon University is a center for sustainability. The student-led organic farm produces healthy, sustainably harvested food for the SOU community. The Farm provides food to SOU Dining as well as the Ashland School District. The Farm is a hub for education, student and faculty research and community outreach to the Rogue Valley. Projects on The Farm inspire a generation of ecologically-committed leaders who promote a vision of living and working sustainably in community and on the land. See more here.
The Hawk dining commons addresses pre-consumer food waste by collecting and compost scraps generated in the preparation of student meals. The composted pre-consumer waste is used to enrich soil at The Farm at SOU – and grow more produce for the dining commons.
The program results in the composting of about 400 pounds of food preparation waste each week – materials such as egg shells and scraps from fruits, vegetables and bread. The two-step collection process begins with compostable waste being deposited in specially marked green bins adjacent to the Hawk’s kitchen prep tables; that waste is moved to larger, secondary containers when the smaller bins fill, and the larger containers are transported by truck on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to The Farm, a few blocks to the northeast.
- SOU has given consideration to plate size and how this can influence food waste. A grant from the Department of Environmental Quality in 2019 enabled SOU to reduce its plate size from 10.5 inch plates to 9 inch plates and reduce food waste by over 20%.
- SOU awarded grant for novel approach to reducing food waste
- Dining encourages students to only take an amount of food that they can finish, as they can always come back for seconds
- SOU dining donates meals to the Raiders Helping Raiders program, and makes weekly donations to the SOU Food Pantry
- The Hawk donates all excess/unused food three times a week to the Ashland Community Food Bank
- Second Serving Program: Second Serving is an SOU Dining program that helps reduce campus food waste while supporting students facing food insecurity. The program provides notifications about leftover food from SOU Catering events, allowing students to access high-quality, fresh food at no cost.
- Raider Repack: Raider Repack recovers unused food from the Hawk dining lines and repackages it for sale at the Landing for just $2. This program provides an affordable dinner option for students who may have missed the designated evening meal window, while also helping reduce food waste.
- Used cooking oil is converted to biofuels by a local company.
- Compliance with Oregon’s law prohibiting single-use straws unless requested by the customer.
- Utilization of reusable to-go containers for take-out food.
- Purchase of touchless condiment dispensers to reduce single-use condiment packets.
