As part of a three-year sustainability grant, the project, led by assistant professor John C. Jones, addresses food waste and food insecurity on campus.

More than one-third of all available food in the U.S. goes unconsumed through loss or waste, according to the Department of Agriculture. A team at Virginia Commonwealth University is working to reverse that trend on the Monroe Park Campus, one meal at a time.

John C. Jones, Ph.D., launched Ram Fridges this past fall in response to student requests for more fresh food, including fruits and vegetables. Supported by a three-year, nearly $500,000 grant from the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, the new initiative both mitigates food waste and helps feed students by diverting unsold food – in single-serving, clamshell packaging – from Shafer Court Dining Center to the three new refrigerators.

“In a lot of ways, VCU is really a small city,” said Jones, an assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies, which is part of VCU Life Sciences. “We feed thousands upon thousands of people every week. Anecdotally, in my experience working here for years, I’ve seen a lot of food waste. Food that goes into the trash is really wasteful, [especially] when you consider how many VCU students deal with food insecurity.”

According to a 2023 study led by Youngmi Kim, Ph.D., around 35% of VCU students report experiencing some form of food insecurity. Ongoing efforts to address this include Ram Pantry, which has helped feed students for more than a decade, and Little Ram Pantries, which was inspired by the concept of Little Free Libraries.

“What makes the Ram Fridges and Little Ram Pantries project so special to me is that I know what kind of impact this kind of work can make on a student’s life,” said Jade Underwood, a VCU student who works with Jones as part of the Federal Work-Study program. “That nagging worry in the back of your head when it comes to things like food and hygiene products when you’re struggling is a deceptively heavy burden.”

The project is a collaboration between VCU’s Center for Environmental Studies, College of Engineering, School of Public Health, VCU Dining Services and its partner, Aramark.

Jones, Underwood and Sara Spence, another FWS student, work together to distribute food to the three Ram Fridges as well as ensure that the refrigerators are safe, clean and accessible. The three Ram Fridges are located in Cabell Library, the Cary Street Gym, and lecture wing of the Trani Life Sciences Building.

Their food safety inspection plan includes checking the fridges three times a week. Spence and Underwood confirm the temperature and number of items, as well as make a record of what, if anything, needed to be thrown away.

As Underwood said, safety is the No. 1 priority, but “ensuring that the fridge feels like a hospitable place to get a little extra food” is a close second.

Later this year, the plan is to add sensors, developed by a team at the College of Engineering, that tracks when and how often the fridges are being accessed as well as monitoring the temperature inside the fridges and alerting Jones and his team if refrigeration has been disrupted. The team is iterating from a previous design by Lauren Linkous, who recently received a doctoral degree from the College of Engineering.

The Ram Fridge project welcomes donations directly into the fridges, as long as the items follow the donation guidelines that are posted on the exterior of each fridge. The donation of unopened/sealed dairy products, bread products and pre-packaged meals is encouraged alongside fresh, uncut produce. Importantly, meat, home-cooked or opened and unsealed items are strictly forbidden. The safety checks that occur three days a week ensure these guidelines are followed so users are kept safe.

Jones and his team are also working with Aramark, which partners with VCU Dining Services, to track food waste in Shafer Court Dining Center’s Market 810. Eventually, their goal is to determine the foods most often going to waste and to use that data to improve efficiency.

To track what is and isn’t being eaten, the project’s co-principal investigator Tamer Nadeem, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Engineering, is developing a scanning system that will record returned plates before they are washed. By combining technologies such as radio frequency identification-tagged plates, machine learning and high-precision measuring tools, the system will help provide insights into both food preparation and consumption habits.

“This project aligns with our ongoing sustainability and food insecurity efforts and helps us make informed decisions about menu planning,” said Stephen Barr, Ed.D., the director of VCU Business Services. “By tracking food waste and student preferences, we can continuously refine our operations to be more efficient, sustainable and better tailored to the dining needs of our students.”

As Jones pointed out, Ram Fridges do more than align with the One VCU Sustainability Plan, which prioritizes enhancing community health and well-being by minimizing VCU’s environmental impact, including by increasing the diversion of food waste. The fridges also make “the overall organizational structure of the university more efficient.”

“In the spectrum of ways that we can reduce waste, preventing it from being created to begin with is the best thing that we can do,” Jones said. “But if it is created, then we can at least divert it so that somebody else can eat it.”

Additionally, the project will engage the VCU community through education and outreach initiatives, eventually displaying real-time interactive dashboards with waste statistics to raise awareness and encourage more sustainable dining habits. Furthermore, workshops, curriculum integration and community partnerships will help promote a culture of sustainability and environmental responsibility across campus and the Richmond region by providing a foundation for future sustainability initiatives. The team anticipates these efforts to begin in the fall of 2026.

By Sian Wilkerson. This story first appeared in VCU News.