Penn State does measure the amount of food waste from food served at 9 Residential Dining locations across 5 campus locations: University Park, Harrisburg, Altoona, Behrend, and Berks. Other campuses do not have enough student residents on site or enough on campus population to offer food services. Therefore, we cannot report numbers for the entire university system. The following information reflects only those campuses with dining service locations which recorded food waste data.

• According to Residential Dining LeanPath, the system used to measure pre- and post-consumer food waste, in 2023 food waste totaled 264.7 tons/529,419.15 lbs/240,140.8 kg/240.2 mt

At the University Park campus, the food waste was sent to the university compost facility to be turned into soil that is used on university landscaping grounds. The Live On website highlights other Food Waste efforts of Penn State Food Services. 

 

Learn more about Penn State’s progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals HERE and on SDG 2 HERE.