The North Dining Hall was built in 2014 with sustainability as a design focus and was awarded a LEED Silver certification in February 2015 from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). This third-party certification recognizes the building for its environmentally friendly construction, interior design, operations, and maintenance. Significantly, it was designed as a zero-waste facility.
Notable sustainability elements of North Dining Hall are its high percentage of recycled construction content, tall windows that allow for maximal natural light, an efficient HVAC system, and laminated glass photovoltaic (PV) solar panel system providing up to 10kW of power.
In the kitchen, cooking appliances are energy efficient, and the dish return area includes a pulper/extractor machine which grinds up organic waste and extrudes excess water, converting it to readily compostable material. The organic waste leaving the building is reduced by about 70% from raw waste to pulp.
Thanks to the building’s design as a zero-waste facility, all pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste (collected at the dish return) is composted at North Dining Hall.