Three students were recognized as recipients of academic awards in sustainability at the FRESH Food, Packaging & Sustainability Summit, which took place September 18 – 19, 2023 at Clemson University.
Sarah Dumont – Printpack Sustainability Scholar
Sarah Dumont is the inaugural Printpack Sustainability Scholar. This scholarship supports students in pursuit of sustainable packaging initiatives and education. Sarah is a senior from Goose Creek, SC. She is studying Packaging Science with an emphasis in Food and Health Care Packaging and completed a summer Co-Op with Burt’s Bees where she was involved in identifying alternative sources of plastic resins to expand the company’s use of sustainable materials.
During her time at Clemson, she has been involved in the Clemson University Tiger Band, multiple Creative Inquiry programs and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi. She has experience in zero waste event planning, as well as in the research of the sustainability of aluminum beverage cups and the compostability of sustainably sourced materials used in dinnerware alongside Sonoco FRESH. Additionally, she has coordinated game day recycling within the Tiger Band community as a part of the nationwide Game Day Recycling Challenge. Currently working in research and development as a part of the packaging team at Burt’s Bees, she has been involved in identifying alternative sources of plastic resins to expand the company’s use of sustainable materials. She looks forward to graduating with a B.S. in Packaging Science in May 2024.
Blake Greene – Sonoco Graduate Research Assistant in Sustainability
Blake Greene, the first Sonoco Graduate Research Assistant in Sustainability, earned his undergraduate degree from Clemson University in 2014 and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Food, Nutrition and Packaging Sciences.
His research with Dr. Duncan Darby focuses on heat-sealing technology in flexible packaging. Seal failure is one of the most common causes of food spoilage and waste in flexible packaging. Blake’s research is focused on polymer diffusion at the material interface in heat sealing, how this diffusion is affected by sealing temperature and dwell time and how these factors relate to the strength of peelable seals. The research is aimed at improving the fundamental understanding of heat sealing and seal strength and has the potential to inform the design of more sustainable packaging films and improve sealing operations to reduce energy usage and food waste.
Meredith Clem – the Student Leader of the Relentless Challenge Grant
With mentorship from Dr. Andrew Hurley, Meredith is the student leader of the South Carolina Department of Commerce 2023 Relentless Challenge Grant that was awarded to Sonoco FRESH to help develop the next generation of innovators in sustainability.
Dr. Hurley’s class is working on an experiment to determine whether or not compostable packaging materials leave traces within our plants. The students are working with a compostable fiber material, which they composted using a home composting system called Lomi. They then used various percentages of this compost to create a substrate for lettuce to grow in. Through testing multiple criteria, they will track components from the compost and other variables to determine where they end up over time. The goal is to test lettuce leaves for any trace of components that came from the compostable material.
Meredith earned her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Anderson University and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Packaging Science.
The Clemson COVID Challenge was a summer 2020 virtual research and design opportunity for teams of undergraduates to work on problems related to the current COVID-19 situation as well as future possible pandemics. Teams of students worked with mentors to identify problems and come up with proposed ideas and solutions. In mid-June, students submitted a pitch video of their ideas and competed for the opportunity to see their projects possibly continue to implementation. Sonoco FRESH sponsored a Creative Inquiry (CI) team to look at the impact of COVID-19 on packaging, safety and food waste. Below is a summary of the team’s project and a link to the team’s poster presentation.
When COVID-19 started to spread quickly across the country in early March 2020, restaurants, bars and many other places started closing. The resulting shift in food demand, combined with a change in consumer behavior, caused a strain in the supply chain.
Vacuum packaging is a type of packaging that extends shelf life by removing oxygen and preserves quality of food and increases shelf life by eliminating growth of spoilage bacteria (aerobic bacteria). Extending shelf life reduces food waste, and the tamper evident packaging will add an additional layer of comfort and safety in consumers’ minds.
Clemson University’s Recycling Services department manages a compost site which processes food waste from campus. The site is located at the Cherry Crossing Research Facility. Just like the rest of us it has been greatly impacted by COVID-19, but work at the site has not stopped. Student interns Matthew Lawrence and Jared Montgomery were kind enough to give FRESH a tour of the facility earlier this spring.
This mixture then undergoes a 6-week process of progressing piles, ending with the cure pile, which is loaded into a trommel and sifted into the final product of sifted compost. The sifted compost can be land applied or used as soil amendment. The compost piles are turned every other day to make sure they are aerated properly and decomposing as quickly as they can.
Cherry Crossing’s final compost product is used by campus landscaping as well as the student organic farm. This past year a large majority went to Musser Fruit Farm, Clemson’s fruit research farm. The compost is also typically sold to the community, but sales were suspended at the time of our tour. With Clemson’s campus shutting down as a result of the pandemic, there had been an extreme shortage of food waste produced from campus. Before the campus closed due to COVID-19, the recycling staff was picking up about 48 bins per day. Now they’re only collected an average of 10 bins a week.
The team researched colleges and universities across the United States that are considered leaders in the areas of the 
Clemson has seen many successes when it comes to reducing food waste, but there is always room for improvement. Trayless dining has been implemented on campus, but according to rising junior Caroline Joseph, “people see the dining hall as an all you can eat buffet and they don’t think twice about throwing away the food they don’t like or loading up their plates with more than they know they are going to eat.” The CI team identified Clemson’s composting program as one of the university’s strong suits when it comes to food waste reduction and would love to see the program expand to non-dining hall locations on campus, such as Chick-fil-A and Subway. Most of Clemson’s athletic programs have steadily approached zero waste. In fact, Clemson secured first place in the 
One area the CI students discussed at length was food donation. Currently, Clemson donates perishable and non-perishable goods to the Golden Corner Food Pantry in Seneca, SC. Thus far, 22,000 lbs. of items have been donated for the 2019-2020 school year. The university also supports the Paw Pantry, a student-run, on-campus space offering supplies of food and hygiene products. While the school holds food drives and encourages students to use their Paw Points/Tiger Stripe balances to benefit the pantry, the pantry cannot offer perishable goods like produce, milk or meat. According to CI student Caroline Joseph, “There are a lot of food safety issues, storage problems and a lack of transportation that feed into the inability to donate all of our leftover food. There are so many other schools around the same size as Clemson that have excellent donation programs to food pantries on campus and in the surrounding areas, so we know it’s possible.” The CI team would like to see Clemson create a Food Recovery Network, similar to what Northern Arizona University (NAU) has done. A professional nonprofit with 230 chapters across the United States, 
There are absolutely opportunities to learn more about the food waste issue, and/or to get involved with campus efforts. For more information on how waste is handled at Clemson, visit 
Sonoco FRESH is a multi-disciplinary hub for innovation and research at Clemson University whose mission is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. Visit 