Kitchen Cabinet
December 10, 2018
Steve Kjellgren, Evan Jakes, Jen Donkin, Lisa Heldke, Danielle Burger, Mark Hansen, Molly Yunkers, Kevin Birr, Paul Matzke, Adam Bogen, James Dontje, Chuck Niederriter, Bri Jol
Campus Kitchens – Evan Jakes
They have a group of 8 in the team ranging from freshmen to seniors & are meeting weekly. Last week Rafi & Evan went to the Mankato Campus Kitchens. The Mankato site works from a church kitchen and they get food from chipotle, Panera and the campus food service. They used to have a business management course affiliated with the campus kitchen. They started out making sandwiches and then branched out to procuring food from local restaurants. The Mankato site also makes PB & J sandwiches which the athletes take advantage of & is something we could possibly start doing at Gustavus
The Gustavus group will need a place where food could be available and eventually a home base. They also need a sponsoring office to be an affiliate of campus kitchens so they reached out to Grady St. Dennis to see if he would sponsor the group & found out they are willing to give credit to students who are willing to volunteer for the program.
The Gustavus group doesn’t know exactly who they will serve. The food can be given back to the community or to certain students. Their main focus is to go back to the community. They would first use leftover food from Gustavus & then if needed would connect with local restaurants for donations. Currently Gustavus sends a donation once a week to Campus Kitchens in Mankato. A lot of the leftovers are served in the buffet and veggies are put in soups. Other food is sent to the compost.
EAC (Environmental Action Coalition) – Bri Jol and Adam Bogen
They just formed at the beginning of the semester combining three groups (Gustie Greens, The climate Justice Coalition and Pop up thrift store). There are three sub groups – Zero Waste, Climate Justice and Community Outreach
They have been involved in Campus Clean Up, Caf Take Over to help educate on composting, Green Discount for bringing your own mug , education days at the elementary schools & reached 120 3rd graders at North Elementary & also went to South elementary. They will continue to look for ways to reach out in the community
Next semester there will be a few on campus over J-Term. They are in the process of planning ground swell day & gathering info to present to marketing to be shared with a larger audience (alumni, parents) about the green initiatives they are doing. They also talked to first year students at Gustie gear up about composting and sustainability on campus.
Spring semester they will host the 2nd Discover the Outdoors program and are starting planning on a pop up thrift shop at the end of spring semester. They have 25-35 students at the meetings & are looking to continue the momentum and growth to make the group sustainable after Bri & Adam graduate.
With hiring new Physical Plant Director and Building Services leader, this will be an opportunity to move forward with increasing composting and other sustainable practices on campus. With the new Nobel building there will be more opportunities for composting especially with a kitchen presence there.
The south central service cooperative hosted Science in Nature classes for elementary students during fall break. 40-50 students plus chaperones did the tour of the composting on campus. Composting has been on campus since July 2013. Several cubic yards come out weekly. We are at 60% of the capacity of the composting machine. The increase in take out boxes from Nobel should be manageable. There will be some trials of composting on other areas on campus this spring. The hope would be to shift the manpower hauling trash around to moving more composting without needing more staff.
Rachel Belvedeer created new signs for the composting & has been doing comparison of new vs old signs in the dorms & found the signs don’t matter and it is something else leading students to not pay attention to which bins their trash/composting go in. There is a film being made to teach us about composting and the why of it. One suggestion was to pull in EAC to help promote composting in their dorms to help propel it further.
Nobel 2019 – Climate Change – Steve Kjellgren
Discussions being made to further our efforts on campus regarding climate change before the next Nobel. Lisa would like to incorporate how do we respond to climate change with the food being served.
Nobel Café Naming competition – There is concern the new café will lead to fewer people staying in the Jackson Campus Center to eat but some felt this will give another opportunity for students to stay on campus in other areas.
There is conversation about bringing solar panels on campus. We are currently paying 1.2-1.3 million dollars annually for electricity. There are financing mechanisms to move forward with adding solar panels. There has been suggestion to solicit funding to help pay for solar up front and then can also focus on updating our infrastructure.
Land Stewardship Project is hosting discussion re: local foods movement December 11th. Lisa Heldke and Steve Kjellgren will be attending.
Next Meeting: Possibly January – date TBD
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