Other ways that "going green" has become part of the campus climate at the CIA include:
- Converting one of its public restaurants, St. Andrew's Café, to be almost entirely locally sourced. As part of the conversion, the CIA added new curricula that include techniques such as canning and preserving to help students understand how sourcing locally can be sustainable any time of the year—even in the Northeast.
- With 41 kitchens and bakeshops on the Hyde Park campus, there is a lot to clean. The CIA switched from using traditional detergents to a new electrolyzing cleaning system that turns salted tap water into chemical-free cleaning solutions. As a result, the college is able to keep a significant amount of chemical detergents from going down the drain.
- Turning used cooking oil into biodiesel to fuel two campus vans and a utility vehicle at the Greystone campus. In addition to helping the environment, fuel from recycled oil costs only 88 cents a gallon to make, saving the CIA more than $64 per tankful. The exhaust also makes the air smell like fresh doughnuts!
- By "precycling" and encouraging students and staff to use their own beverage containers, the Hyde Park campus eliminated the waste of up to 18,000 paper cups and lids every week. The student and staff dining rooms also use napkins that are made of recycled paper and reusable, instead of disposable, to-go containers.
Supporting the environment has become second nature to the next generation of chefs and industry leaders who study at the CIA. The college has been a leader in environmental endeavors, by sourcing food locally, promoting sustainable agriculture, managing resources and employing eco-friendly design. To learn more about these efforts, visit the CIA's Green Campus page at www.ciachef.edu/about/green.
Photo: Techniques such as canning and preserving at St. Andrew's Café, a real-life kitchen lab and public restaurant at the Hyde Park campus, help CIA students understand how sourcing locally can be sustainable any time of year.