By Brian McNeill

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality recently awarded researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University a $1.04 million grant to launch a coordinated initiative to reduce food waste across VCU and VCU Health. The grant will fund activities from June 2026 through June 2029.

The grant was one of 12 awarded to Virginia colleges and universities to support food waste prevention, food rescue and composting initiatives — all designed to divert food from landfills. The projects are meant to reduce landfill methane emissions by preventing wasted food, recovering surplus food to feed people and composting any remaining food waste.

At VCU and VCU Health, the transdisciplinary Food Rescue and Composting initiative will:

• Establish a coordinated, data-driven food system framework across academic and hospital operations.
• Deploy technological and behavioral interventions that minimize pre-consumer waste at academic and hospital dining venues.
• Expand engagement by dining service contractors (Aramark on VCU’s campuses and Morrison Healthcare for VCU Health) along with student volunteers in food rescue, redistribution and composting.
• Develop institutional policies and reporting systems that embed food waste mitigation into VCU’s long-term sustainability and carbon neutrality goals.

A zero-waste campus

The One VCU Sustainability Plan has a goal to transform VCU into a zero-waste campus. The new Food Rescue and Composting initiative will help the university and health system make progress toward that goal, said principal investigator John C. Jones, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability in the College of Humanities and Sciences.

“Food waste is one of the main mechanisms by which the university and health system generate waste on a both weekly and annual basis,” Jones said. “Our team’s efforts to identify and reduce or rescue food waste is a positive step along the pathway of realizing that zero-waste goal for the university.”

VCU and VCU Health combined serve approximately 3.1 million meals annually in cafeterias and retail and catering operations. The initiative estimates that more than 120,000 pounds of food are wasted annually.

Efforts already underway focus on preventing food waste (approximately 15,000 pounds annually) and diverting food (an estimated 35,390 pounds annually) that would otherwise be wasted to feeding people, including through Ram Fridges, Ram Pantry, the Too Good to Go app and other methods.

Composting efforts are also already underway, with 96,765 pounds composted between October 2024 and October 2025 across VCU and VCU Health.

The Food Rescue and Composting initiative projects that it will prevent an estimated 42,000 pounds of food waste annually, will rescue an additional 16,110 pounds annually and will lead to an additional 128,000 pounds composted.

A collaborative effort

As part of the efforts to prevent food waste, a team led by Jeff Smith, Ph.D., a professor of supply chain management and analytics in the School of Business, will analyze behavioral, structural and operational factors contributing to pre-consumer waste across both academic and hospital kitchens. Their findings will guide all subsequent prevention and rescue activities by identifying the most effective process and policy interventions.

“My goal is to find a way to optimize operations so as to reduce the waste that can be addressed before any food product gets to a consumer,” Smith said. “Specifically, I am working on finding ways to streamline activities in four functional areas: ordering/receiving, inventory/storage, preparation/production and unsold/leftovers. My first tasks are process documentation (which is largely about confirming the four stages) and waste quantification (i.e., determining how much is actually wasted). Once finished, the intention is to design intervention mechanisms across each stage to help reduce the total waste generated.”

A team led by Tamer Nadeem, Ph.D., a computer science professor in the College of Engineering, will develop predictive cooking and monitoring systems in Shafer Court Dining Center to right-size meal preparation. Aramark will also implement software that integrates with its existing kitchen management systems to further reduce overproduction.

To rescue food from being wasted, the initiative will seek to capture and redistribute edible surplus. Jones and Maxwell Holle, Ph.D., a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, will establish a student-led Food Rescue Club. Brooks Baker, coordinator of food access initiatives in the Office of Student Advocacy, and Ram Pantry staff will manage rescued food and logistics. A new full-time food waste coordinator in VCU Sustainability will oversee operations and assist other team members with rescue initiatives. These groups will also collaborate on launching a mobile app that event organizers on campus can use to alert campus users when extra catered food becomes available.

Composting efforts led by VCU Sustainability will expand in infrastructure, signage and education to divert nonedible organics, completing the campus food recovery loop. A team will also explore an expansion of composting within the hospital system.

Leland “Bert” Waters, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Gerontology in the College of Health Professions, will lead evaluation efforts for the initiative and will develop VCU Convergence focused on sustainability, which will aim to establish the transdisciplinary infrastructure needed to tackle systemic challenges in the food system. Waters and Kristin M. MacDonald, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Health Administration, will also develop a scholarship for a Master of Health Administration student, with preference given to those in VCU’s Sustainability, Health and Health Care certificate program, to develop a sustainability plan for food waste in VCU Health.

Morrison Healthcare is currently using Waste Not 2.0, a real-time food waste tracking and prevention system that helps VCU Health capture what food is wasted, where it occurs and why — giving chefs actionable data to adjust production, reduce overproduction, lower costs and minimize environmental impact. The data from this program may support and align with the initiative to quantify food waste in the hospital kitchen.

Embedding successful practices

Anna Malone, zero-waste program manager, said VCU Sustainability’s role in the initiative will include coordination, implementation support, data management and reporting. In addition to supporting food waste diversion, rescue and composting activities, the team will help integrate project outcomes into existing sustainability tracking and reporting frameworks.

“By coordinating data collection, aggregating diversion metrics and aligning results with institutional sustainability goals, we can help ensure that successful practices become embedded within VCU’s long-term operations and decision-making processes,” Malone said.

“A key operational component of our involvement is evaluating and piloting composting opportunities across both VCU’s academic and health campuses,” she said. “We will assess collection logistics, signage, contamination reduction strategies and operational requirements for composting at campus events and other food-generating activities. Sustainability will also support efforts to evaluate the feasibility of expanding composting within the VCU Health system.”

The project advances several priorities within the One VCU Sustainability Plan, Malone added, including increasing food waste diversion through composting and food recovery, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, supporting student and community well-being, and strengthening collaboration among staff, researchers, students and community partners.

The team is looking for additional collaborators. “Realizing the goal of zero food waste on our campus requires the efforts of every member of the VCU and VCU Health community,” Jones said. “Please contact us if you have the capacity to assist with our efforts.” Jones can be reached by email at jonesj39@vcu.edu.

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