Dining Services is promoting sustainable lifestyles on the Harvard Medical School Quad and beyond these days, thanks to initiatives aimed at reducing waste and cutting the School’s carbon footprint.
“We feed about 2,300 people a day—breakfast, lunch snacks—including 1,400 people at lunchtime in the Courtyard, Atrium and Elements cafés, plus as many as 900 extras when we have conferences,” said former Dining Services Manager Jason DiChiara. After a successful run with HMS, DiChiara recently moved on to a district-level assignment in Rhode Island with his employer, Restaurant Associates.
DiChiara credited Restaurant Associates for supporting his efforts to be green at HMS. He also gave thanks to HMS Director of Operations Jane Garfield, her staff, and Claire Berezowitz of Harvard’s Office for Sustainability—all of whom, he said, made it possible for him to explore ideas about composting, and about utilizing locally grown and seasonal produce.
One of DiChiara’s successful experiments was the Farmer’s Market, put into place as a way of connecting staff, faculty and students with farmers who provide fresh, locally grown produce along with information about “eating in season.” To promote a concept he calls alternative eating, DiChiara put into practice Flexitarian Fridays, offering diners meatless main dishes once a week. Because these meals incorporate plant-based protein ingredients, they take less fuel to produce, and generate less carbon waste, than meaty meals. Also, during the past several summers, Dining Services employees have been using growing boxes in the atrium of the New Research Building to produce an abundance of tomatoes and herbs, which the chef uses to add flavor and color to foods prepared for the HMS cafés.
To extend the reach of these ideas, DiChiara set up a regular program called Chef’s Tables—where the individual cooking the meals meets with his HMS customers to demonstrate ways of preparing foods and of choosing ingredients that are sustainable and healthful.
“It’s a way of helping people take home what we do here,” DiChiara said.
The ideas do not stop with DiChiara’s departure. Says the new Dining Services director, Jeff Barnhart, “I am committed to continuing everything Jason started, and to going beyond it.” For the moment, that means working toward DiChiara’s plan to develop a program for post-consumer composting.
“We compost everything that comes from the kitchen,” said Barnhart. “We use compostable dinnerware, too. But post-consumer composting is difficult to put in place— which is why, right now, all of the compostable waste from the dining room goes out with the regular trash.”
Diners will need to be better educated about how to dispose of lunchtime leftovers properly. They must also become more mindful of the effects that little actions, like tossing a cracker wrapper in with food scraps, have on the waste stream and, ultimately, the environment.
