From Scraps to Systems Change

How URI Students Launched a Successful Food Waste Diversion Initiative

By Jessica Minker
Illustrations by Gwen Keraval

On an ordinary afternoon in URI’s Butterfield Dining Hall, silverware clatters over the hum of conversation, and the aroma of freshly cooked food drifts through the air. But tucked away at the dish return station, something new is taking place: Students pause for a moment before rushing off to class, scraping their leftovers into bright yellow bins instead of tossing them in the trash.

It’s a small action, but one that’s adding up to something big. Since its launch in the spring of 2024, a student-led initiative has diverted more than 105,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill, turning it instead into high-quality compost.

For more than a decade, URI has diverted food waste—things like onion skins and chicken bones—in the “back of house,” where Dining Services staff cook meals. And when possible, surplus prepared meals have been donated to Rhody Outpost, URI’s food pantry for students, or to community partners like the Elisha Project. But while kitchen scraps were composted and extra food was redistributed to community members in need, anything left on students’ plates after a meal was destined for the landfill—until recently. Two years ago, undergraduate Dylan Murdock spurred a movement to expand food waste diversion to the “front of house”—the student-facing area of the dining halls.

How it Works

In the dish return area of Butterfield and Mainfare dining halls, when student ambassadors are on shift, bright yellow bins stand where trash cans once did. After students finish their meals, they toss their compostable waste—half-eaten sandwiches, orange peels, and paper napkins—into these bins instead of the trash. Nearby, ambassadors offer friendly guidance, helping their peers sort out what belongs in the yellow bins and what doesn’t. Their presence has proven essential: By monitoring the stations and educating diners, they’ve kept contamination below 5%, ensuring the food waste can be diverted from the landfill. Once the bins are full, they’re collected by ReMix Organics, a Rhode Island-based company that transports them to commercial composting facilities, where URI’s scraps are transformed into nutrient-rich soil amendment.

Westin Palumbo, Murdock’s co-sustainability manager and a senior double-majoring in environmental science and sustainable agriculture, oversees the project’s staff of roughly 13 student employees. He emphasizes that the team’s goal is to create lasting change that extends beyond URI’s campus. “The purpose of our program is not just to make sure that food scraps are getting diverted. If it were,” he explains, “we would just have the student ambassadors move everything into the yellow bins themselves. What we’re trying to do instead is empower students to think differently about food waste and to build habits they’ll carry with them long after they leave campus.”

Turning Challenge Into Opportunity

Murdock, now a senior studying sustainable agriculture and food systems, came to URI with a passion for sustainability and a determination to create lasting change. With Rhode Island’s only landfill projected to reach capacity by 2046—and with approximately 40% of the landfill waste made up of compostable material—Murdock saw food waste diversion as an actionable, high-impact solution that could take root on campus and potentially engage future generations of students in sustainability actions.

Diverting URI’s food waste has the potential to extend the life expectancy of the state’s landfill, and to benefit the climate, too. When food decomposes in a landfill, it breaks down without oxygen and releases methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Composting, however, allows food to decompose in the presence of oxygen, producing carbon dioxide instead. It’s a win-win for the Rhode Island community and our planet alike.

As of February this year, URI’s front-of-house food waste collection diverted over 105,000 pounds of food from the landfill, sending it instead to be turned into compost. This translates to the equivalent of saving over 64.67 metric tons of CO2 emissions from being released into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the emissions from driving more than 164,558 miles in an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle.

From Idea to Implementation

Murdock first pitched his idea to expand food waste diversion in URI’s dining halls at a Sustainability Supper—a series of events hosted by Mary Parlange, wife of URI President Marc Parlange, designed to bring together students, faculty, and community members to share a locally sourced meal and discuss sustainability. At one such gathering in 2023, Murdock had a conversation with Katharine Flynn, then-director of URIs Business Engagement Center, and seized the moment. “If you give us the opportunity, we’ll make this happen,” Murdock told her. “Food waste diversion will become a part of URI.”

With support from a gift made by philanthropists Eric and Wendy Schmidt to URI for a variety of sustainability efforts, Murdock’s idea for a food waste diversion initiative had the resources it needed to become a reality.

Murdock’s next step was to meet with Pierre St-Germain, URI’s director of dining and conference services, who was very receptive to the proposal. “Any successful waste diversion program has to eventually incorporate post-consumer waste diversion,” notes St-Germain. “The thing is, it needs to come from the students themselves.”

Asking students to take one extra step in their routine may not sound like much, but shifting community-wide habits is hard, especially when those habits have been formed over 18-plus years. St-Germain has seen firsthand that behavior change is far more achievable when the message comes from peers rather than administrators. “It resonates more,” he says, “when students are the ones encouraging other students.”

In collaboration with Dining Services, Murdock assembled a small team of students to run the operations—from ambassadors who help students sort their food waste, to data analysts who track the project’s performance.

In spring 2024, food waste diversion officially expanded to the front of house, dramatically increasing the amount of waste that could be captured. During the 2022–23 academic year, when only back-of-house scraps were collected, 5 tons of food waste were diverted. For 2024–25, with front-of-house food waste diversion in place, that number jumped to more than 32 tons—a 540% increase.

Measuring Impact

Beyond collecting food waste, the students also gather data to reveal patterns in food waste generation. Ambassadors weigh the yellow bins before and after meals, tracking how much food is being discarded and when. Preliminary findings show that the most food waste is produced during lunch, possibly because students are in a hurry, grabbing quick meals between classes, and leaving more uneaten food behind. By identifying when food waste peaks and the items that are most commonly thrown away, the team is helping Dining Services refine menus and preparation strategies to stop waste before it can even happen.

To ensure the initiative’s long-term success, the team is working with Amanda Missimer, a clinical associate professor with joint appointments in URI’s colleges of Health Sciences and Environment and Life Sciences, and Paul Wolff, URI’s campus sustainability officer. “My role,” explains Missimer, “is to support and evaluate programs, to put evidence-based practice behind them.” This is critical “for continued funding, to show the program is doing what it set out to do, and to expand the good work.”

Under Missimer’s guidance, undergraduate student and agriculture and food systems fellow Cailey Mingolla is surveying students in the dining halls to better understand what motivates them to reduce their food waste and participate in waste diversion (or not). In the fall 2025 semester, approximately 85% of the students eating in Butterfield and Mainfare dining halls participated in food waste diversion by emptying compostable waste into the yellow bins. The team is hoping to see that number increase in the coming year. “I was inspired to get involved once I saw just how possible it was to make lasting change,” she says. Mingolla, who is double-majoring in environmental science and management and political science, is collecting data that will ultimately strengthen efforts to increase participation in waste diversion across campus.

Results from the pilot study indicate that the primary reason students choose to divert their food waste is environmental benefit, followed by a desire to reduce the workload of Dining Services staff. In contrast, the most common reasons students do not participate in food waste diversion are a lack of awareness about the program and the fact that they already have a clean plate.

Growing a Culture of Sustainability

Nearly two years after introducing front-of-house food waste diversion to the dining halls, the students, faculty, and staff behind the project are beginning to think about what’s next. In the near term, the student team hopes to expand food waste diversion to campus cafés and perhaps even residence halls.

Before they attempt to grow the initiative, the team has identified a need to continue educating the student body on why food waste diversion is important and how it works at URI. To weave food waste diversion into the fabric of URI’s culture, Mingolla and Missimer are developing a sustainability module for URI 101, the required introductory seminar for first-year students that sets them up for navigating university life. “Something I really want to see happen in the next year,” Mingolla says, “is educational materials being given to the students during Orientation so that they understand the way we do things here in our dining halls before they even step inside one.”

A first-of-its-kind student leadership internship has also been created to document the findings of the food waste research and to create protocols for future students. That, says Wolff, “is an impressive legacy for Murdock and Palumbo.”

Looking further ahead, the team would like to see the University create a closed-loop food waste system on campus so that, instead of hauling URI’s food waste to off-site composting facilities, the waste could be processed on campus—turning dining hall leftovers into compost that nourishes campus-grown crops and generates energy to help power URI’s grid.

Regardless of how the project evolves, one thing is clear: When the URI community rallies around an idea, a single student’s vision can become lasting institutional change—with ripple effects that extend far beyond campus.

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Jessica Minker is a graduate student in URI’s Master of Environmental Science and Management program, specializing in conservation biology, as well as a communications fellow for the College of the Environment and Life Sciences. She earned her bachelor’s in geology-biology at Brown University, where she managed their student-led composting program.

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Food Waste Resources for Rhode Islanders

The great news is that you don’t have to eat in URI’s dining halls to participate in food waste diversion. Whether you’re on campus or not, there are plenty of ways to make a difference.

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URI Food Waste Diversion By the Numbers

*As of February 2026

For the accessible version of this infographic, please click here.