Sustainability
UVA Dining actively promotes sustainability by:
- Seeing how its actions and plans fit in with UVA’s vision for a sustainable future
- Maintaining certification from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program through its Dining operation’s environmental action plan
- Procuring 11.4% of its foods from sustainable sources (local, seasonal, organically grown, fairly traded and humanely raised) in the 2007 calender year.
- Offering several local food (grown within a 250 mile radius of UVA) items in its dining halls and convenience stores, including:
            a)      salsa from The Farm at Red Hill, in North Garden, VA
            b)      tofu from Twin Oaks in Louisa, VA
            c)     cage-free eggs from Glenwood farms in Jetersville, VA
            d)     beef at the Fine Arts Cafe from Polyface Farms in Swoope, VA
- Offering a wide selection of organic foods (more than 45 items) at The Crossroads
- Promoting Runk Dining Hall’s organic salad bar
- Serving fairly traded coffee and chocolate in all residential dining rooms (Pura Vida) and all Java City locations
- Promoting the new Fine Arts Café, that features many natural, local, organic, and fairly traded items
- Transitioned from buying conventional shelled eggs to buying ones that are cage-free
- Working with the leaders of the Morven Farm effort in the hope that it will be able to purchase a given percentage of its foods from this local land
- Developing a student and faculty run garden in Hereford Residential College
- Surveying students to assess the existing demand for sustainable foods
- Hiring sustainability intern from the University of Virginia’s student body
- Collaborating with interested student groups, faculty, and staff in the creation of sustainable dining guidelines for UVA (brochure page 1 and page 2)
- Sponsoring a Local Harvest Theme Meal in several of its dining locations (as a collaborative effort with UVA Student Council’s Environmental Sustainability Committee)
- Offering space on weekly table tents and LCD screens at OHill to student organizations to communicate events at no charge
- Participating in recycling in customer and service areas
- Collecting and recycling 100% of our waste oil
- Using bio-diesel in all Dining vehicles
- Installing pulping machines at all residential dining rooms to reduce the landfill burden
- Researching how other colleges and universities have been successful in their procurement of sustainable foods

To-Go containers are now Green Products! This means that they are made of environmentally-friendly subsitutes for plastic or styrofoam. These new products are created from health conscious natural fibers such as grass, reed plasma and sugar cane. Though they are biodegradable when composted with soil and water, they can with stand food at both hot and cold temperatures. These new to-go containers are recyclable, natural, non-toxic, biodegradable, water proof, oil-proof and microwaveable. Pick one up at O-Hill or Runk today!