UH Dining Services marked Earth Week with its Go Green! event at Cougar Woods Dining
Commons, highlighting how students, faculty, and staff can make a meaningful impact
through sustainable practices and everyday choices.
The department continues to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability by offering
nutritious food sourced responsibly. This year, Cougar Woods earned both the Waste
Reduction Award and the Sustainable Seafood Award from the Green Restaurant Association.
The Go Green! Event emphasized that individual actions matter. A comment board invited diners to share small steps they take to support the environment, while programming focused on reducing food waste and incorporating more plant-based options into daily diets.
“I feel like it better educated us about what happens with our world, especially our trash — an everyday thing — and how we can learn about it,” said Anish Babu, a biology freshman.
Digital screens throughout the dining commons displayed sustainability facts, reinforcing
the event’s key messages.
“It taught me that there's a more sustainable way to throw away food. It doesn’t have
to be just on the conveyor belt because we have composting here,” said Andrew Economon,
an economics junior. “I learned that there are a lot of ways to make new food creations
with plants.”
Add Green to Your Plate
Building on last year’s success, the menu featured creative, green-inspired variations
of popular dishes, encouraging diners to explore plant-forward options.
Selections included:
- Green coconut shrimp curry with basmati rice with peas and roasted broccoli.
- Grilled beef meatballs chimichurri with garlic herb olive oil mashed potatoes, spicy collard greens, and grilled Brussels sprouts with lemon.
- Spinach cheese quesadilla with cilantro lime slaw and guacamole.
- Green herb marinated chicken with cilantro lime quinoa and sautéed squash and zucchini.
Additional offerings included pesto pizza with arugula, herb oil pasta with creamy
pesto alfredo, and desserts infused with matcha, such as seed energy bites, white
chocolate shortbread, and chocolate cupcakes.
“I’m a vegetarian. I was like, whoa, this is actually nice,” said Babu. “Arugula pizza,
that was my favorite. I also liked the Brussels sprouts and how they did it.”
Reducing Food Waste
Minimizing food waste remained a central focus of the event. Since 2021, Cougar Woods
has diverted more than one million pounds of food waste from and donated over 40,000
pounds of surplus food to student services and community partners.
Interactive activities helped raise awareness and offered practical solutions:
- Polar vs. Pantry — Guests learned how to properly store common food items, such as potatoes, bananas, lettuces and greens, and garlic, to extend freshness
- Plate Waste Interview — Students visualized how much food they discarded learned about decomposition timelines.
- Compost Trail Mix — A hands-on activity illustrated the components of compost using edible ingredients
- Compost Education — Representatives from Zero Waste Houston, the organization that collects the dining hall’s food waste and uses it to make compost, explained composting processes, distributed native plants, and shared information about their free two-part certification course on hot composting.
To encourage participation, attendees followed a bingo-style activity card featuring event stations. Completed cards earned a prize, including a free popsicle from local vendor Popsibilities.
“I would say it honestly gives me hope for the future of sustainability at UH, I think it’s very cool that they did this,” said Economon. “I’m interested to see what else they can do for the sustainability efforts. If we keep doing it, I think we can have a better Earth.”