Tag: Students

Held on September 19 – 21 at Clemson University, the FRESH 2022 Food, Packaging & Sustainability Summit focused on technology as an enabler of circular solutions across the food value chain and included strategies to achieve sustainability targets in both corporate and consumer environments.

With the help of Clemson students, faculty and staff, Sonoco FRESH worked to reduce as much waste as possible at the FRESH Summit. A Zero Waste event is one that has the goal of reducing the amount of waste produced at the event. An event can create a massive amount of waste, whether it is from food scraps and leftovers, handouts (agendas, speaker presentations, giveaways, etc.) or food and drink containers.

The industry standard for a Zero Waste event is 90% diversion from landfill. 87% of the waste from the FRESH Summit was composted, 12% was recycled and less than 1% was sent to landfill.

During the 2021-2022 academic year, with guest speakers from WM, Sonoco FRESH sponsored a Creative Inquiry (CI) course on Zero Waste events, with a second-semester focus specifically on the FRESH Summit. The CI students were instrumental in creating many of the processes and procedures that were implemented during the Summit to make it a Zero Waste event.

“When planning a Zero Waste event, you have to consider everything, including the materials going into your décor and the training you give your staff. You have to make sure everyone understands your message,” said Cassidy Nosenzo, a recent Clemson graduate who participated in the CI and spoke at the Summit. “The magic solution is to focus on the ‘reduce’ in reduce, reuse, recycle. The goal should be to reduce waste overall. It is difficult to have no waste produced from an event like this, but that is the goal we strive for. It’s a mindset and it starts at the beginning of a product life cycle rather than at the end.”

Guided by Clemson recycling staff and representatives from WM, the CI students researched and implemented strategies to reduce waste at the FRESH Summit, including minimizing printed materials with the use of an event app, utilizing fresh produce that was donated after the event for décor and designing menus with bulk items and locally-sourced products.

The CI students also researched eco-stations and identified the best options to help Summit attendees easily put their waste in the right bins. Some of the Summit eco-stations were donated, and the others were purchased with grants secured by the students. Waste sorts were held throughout and at the completion of the FRESH Summit where student volunteers ensured the accuracy of separation and weighed the waste. Attendees were encouraged to refrain from bringing any outside food or beverage to the Summit and to acquaint themselves with the waste streams of the Summit eco-stations and dispose of their waste correctly.

“The 99% landfill diversion rate from the Summit far exceeded our expectations and we were thrilled with the cooperation and enthusiasm of our students and attendees as we strived for a zero waste event,” said Anne Barr, Executive Director of Sonoco FRESH. “We hope that the success of our event will inspire others to consider what they can do to reduce waste in their personal and professional endeavors.”

Visit the FRESH Summit website for more information on the efforts to make the FRESH Summit a zero waste event.

Clemson students Sneh Bangar and Cayden Gates introduced their project, BioPack, at the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life sciences annual Cultivate.CAFLS competition this year. Their project was awarded third place with a monetary prize of $500 to further their research and development. These students are working towards changing the future of sustainable packaging.

Biopack was inspired by the goal of turning today’s challenges into tomorrow’s solutions. It is a starch-based film to reimagine food packaging across the commercial landscape. Rather than being designed for standard recycling, Biopack was designed with the goal of biodegradability. So often our waste finds its final stage of life in the environment, so the goal of Biopack was to counteract the problem of harmful waste in the environment and turn it into biodegradable materials.

The two explain, “The food packaging industry is a major contributor to plastic waste because most food packaging is for single-use purposes. Our goal was to find a sustainable alternative to plastic-based food packaging which led us to develop starch-based films.” Starch based films are not designed to be recycled in the traditional fashion that we are used to, and if they are recycled, the options are limited on how to recycle it. If bioplastic contaminates recycled polyethylene terephthalate, the most common plastic, or other chemical components, the entirety of the products could no longer be recycled. Consumers can sort their recycling and dispose of bioplastics in designated areas of recycling centers or find a bioplastic-specific recycling program near them. The team hopes to reinforce the starch film using Kudzu, an invasive weed that has caused sufficient economic losses for the southeast, to act as a sustainable and biodegradable alternative to single-use plastic. This will create a water soluble material that can naturally biodegrade in the environment. They shared a common goal of developing the invasive Kudzu weed into Cellulose Nanocrystals to create something positive for the environment.

The two major components used are Pearl Millet Starch and Cellulose Nanocrystals, which are both plant-based. Pearl Millet Starch has been underutilized as a natural resource, but Sneh and Cayden put their knowledge together to utilize this material as a packaging alternative that ultimately benefits the environment in the long run. Pearl Millet Starch is primarily used for forage and livestock grazing, but it requires significantly less resources to grow compared to other starch crops, essentially making it a simpler and more efficient way to create their starch-based packaging. As a result of their material usage, Biopack is designed to completely degrade within 3-4 weeks of disposal, as compared to several years for single-use plastic. The best way to dispose of Biopack is by composting. It is designed to degrade into water or slil quickly and provice natural nourishment to the environment. If disposed of into waste bins, the packaging will biodegrade on its own.

Biopack is still in its beginning stages, but Sneh and Cayden plan to push their product to become applicable for commercial use. Developing Biopack for commercial use will reduce plastic waste that is harmful to the Earth, wildlife, and humans. “We hope to produce a film that can coexist with current manufacturing operations. Our focus is to develop active packaging films for wider market acceptability” (Bangar). The future of sustainable packaging lies within the curiosity and creativity of students, and Sneh and Cayden have demonstrated that together, we can strive for a better future with the right ideas.

By Kristy Pickurel

The Impact of COVID-19 on Packaging, Safety and Food Waste:
Clemson Creative Inquiry sponsored by Sonoco FRESH

Mint Innovations Team
Dakota Cook, Maria Camargo, Brennan Morgan, Ana Romero*
*Team Mentor

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.

The CI team members performed literature reviews, interviews with corporate experts in packaging and agriculture, brainstormed potential solutions and created a 3-minute video pitch describing their proposed solution of vacuum packaging.

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.

View the Team’s Poster Presentation

The mission of the Sonoco FRESH initiative is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. This means looking holistically at the food life cycle and identifying opportunities that reimagine processes, technologies and behaviors. More information on the Sonoco FRESH initiative can be found at www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH.

By Kristy Pickurel

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.

Food scraps, paper towel waste and yard waste are generated and collected on campus in green composting bins. Clemson’s recycling staff picks the bins up and takes them to the Cherry Crossing facility, where the organic waste is dumped onto a bed of wood chips. The chips and waste are mixed thoroughly to create a pile.

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.

Clemson’s composting program began with a $25,000 grant from the South Carolina DHEC Office of Waste & Recycling, which allowed the university to purchase an in-vessel composter that is still in use today. An alternative to the manual process just described, the composter processes waste much more quickly. Waste and wood chips are combined in the unit’s mixer and then sent to the tumbler. The tumbler rotates once every hour and helps to accelerate the process.

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.

Aside from the effects of the pandemic, the composting program’s biggest challenge is contamination, i.e. items that can’t be composted being placed in the composting bins. These include film plastics such as plastic bags and saran wrap, as well as metal forks and plastic cups from the dining halls. According to Lawrence, Clemson’s composting program was constantly expanding until the virus hit. Since he began interning with the program in November of 2019, composting bins have been placed in two new POD (provisions on demand) markets on campus. The team has also started a community garden at the Cherry Crossing facility and hopes to begin distributing the fruits of its plants in the near future.

For more information on Clemson’s composting and recycling programs, please visit the Clemson Website.

The mission of the Sonoco FRESH initiative is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. This means looking holistically at the food life cycle and identifying opportunities that reimagine processes, technologies and behaviors. More information on the Sonoco FRESH initiative can be found at www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH.

Visit the FRESH YouTube Channel to view a video of the tour.

By Kristy Pickurel

During the spring of 2020, Clemson students Shemar Bryant, Maddyson Frierson, Caroline Joseph and Emily White, led by the university’s Recycling Manager Dave VanDeventer, participated in a Creative Inquiry (CI) sponsored by Sonoco FRESH to document the current life cycle of food waste on campus. The goal of their effort, the Clemson Food Waste Recovery Initiative, was to develop a guide that prioritizes actions to prevent or divert food waste from landfills.

The team researched colleges and universities across the United States that are considered leaders in the areas of the EPA Hierarchy of Food Recovery – institutions that implement actions at the top levels of the hierarchy, which are considered the best ways to prevent and divert wasted food because they create the most benefits for the environment, society and the economy. The project highlighted the programs that the team believed stood out and could benefit, and potentially be implemented at, Clemson.

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 Game Day Recycling Challenge in 2014, 2017 and 2018. The challenge is an annual event where colleges and universities across the nation complete to see who can recycle or reduce the most waste during football games. 123,661 pounds of trash were recycled during Clemson’s 2018 home football games.

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, Food Recovery Network is the largest student movement fighting food waste and hunger in America. NAU started its initiative in 2014 and recovers approximately 4,000 lbs. of hot food every semester and donates it to local food banks. “When we look at donating food at Clemson, the first challenge would be knowing when food is available to donate. The second would be how we collect it and transport it safety,” explained VanDeventer. “I am hoping it can become a collaborative effort where student volunteers can be directly involved.”

Getting students to volunteer is both a challenge and an opportunity at Clemson. According to Joseph, “I think the biggest challenge for reducing food waste is getting people motivated and educated about the issue. If students don’t care because of a lack of knowledge, nothing is going to change. Though the dining halls and composting centers can do some things about food waste, the students are really the ones in control. We have the means and the motivation to do a lot of good for the community, but people just don’t know about the issue or don’t understand the severity of it.”

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 https://cufacilities.sites.clemson.edu/recycling/recyclingInfo. Also, Dave VanDeventer and FRESH graduate research assistant Ana Romero will be leading another CI project this fall, this time with a focus on the disposal of packaging. Sustainability has become a hot topic among consumers, who demand that the products they purchase have sustainable packaging. Yet the professionals who develop this packaging don’t always consider the end of the package’s life, creating more of a challenge than anything for the professionals working at the recycling and compost centers. For more information on this CI, visit https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inquiry/ or reach out to VanDeventer directly at dvand@clemson.edu.

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 www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH for more information, including Clemson student and faculty research.