Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- Some of the salad greens that University of Alaska Fairbanks students are eating this fall are coming from just a few hundred yards outside the dining hall.

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Hot peppers ripen on the plant at the UAF Facilities Services Greenhouse in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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The food, which includes salad greens, tomatoes, peppers and other produce, comes from a greenhouse tucked behind the power plant on campus.

The greenhouse had been used to grow cut flowers and houseplants. But since the produce program started this summer, it's a hit with both food managers and students. There are now plans to add fresh herbs to the menu, and perhaps expand the gardening space.

"It goes full circle," said Greg Whiteside, the residential dining manager at Lola Tilly Commons, the dining hall. "We get this produce, and we try to be more sustainable."

Since the program started this summer, the weekly ration of 30 to 120 pounds of vegetables barely makes a dent at the Lola Tilly Commons, where 700 students are fed at a typical meal. But the thought of growing more local produce on campus has dining managers excited about the possibilities.

"We've served a whole lot of fresh vegetables to these guys, and we've loved doing it," said Robert Saxon, the food production manager at the commons.

Last summer, facilities services landscape supervisor Jenny Day and dining services general manager Ted Lancette forged an agreement to provide seasonal produce to NMS, the company contracted to provide meals on campus.

"I don't know where it's going to go," Day said. "Now we're just showing we're here and willing to try anything."

The locally grown food is one of several measures meant to make dining services at the campus more environmentally friendly.

The cooking oil used at the university - about 500 gallons every three months - is being sold to Greg Micks, a Wasilla entrepreneur, who plans to turn it into biodiesel.

The university's dining halls also have an arrangement with a few local mushers, who claim about 10 gallons of leftovers and expired food each day to feed to their dog teams.

The changes have had a big impact on the NMS bottom line, and the amount of waste has dropped by half in the past few years, Whiteside said.

"If you can save money and do sustainability, every company in the world would like that model," he said.

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