Sodexo at Southern Maine Community College prioritizes sustainable practices as part of our Better Tomorrow Plan: For your health and for the planet.

We encourage trayless dining as part of our Better Tomorrow Plan. Avoiding trays reduces water usage in the dish room. Additionally, dining without a tray makes it easier to not take more food than you can eat, reducing the amount of food waste in the dining hall.

The Maine Course: You can view the list of our local suppliers on the chalkboard in the dining hall. Look for new suppliers from whom we source food in order to positively impact the local economy and reduce our carbon footprint. You can also look for the Maine Course logo on menus to see where your food comes from. Take a look at our local partners here!

Food Recovery Program

Each year hundreds of pounds of unused food is thrown away into landfills instead of being served to those in need. Thankfully, SMCC Dining decided to do something about this and took in 2014 became a Food Recovery verified business. Each day, SMCC Dining collects food that would be otherwise thrown away and donates it to those in need. This past year we were excited to start a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of South Portland Maine who picks up food twice a week that is collected throughout the week and feeds them to their local students. We will continue this great practice and relationship to help feed our local community and kids.

We Compost it

Even with trying our hardest to reduce waste as much as possible, we all still end up with some food that needs to be thrown out. That is where local company We Compost it comes in. In 2015 SMCC Dining partnered with We Compost it who collects all our food scraps and waste and takes it to their facilities in Lewiston Maine to turned it into nutritious compost soil for local businesses and gardeners to purchase. We are happy to have this great partnership resulting in reducing our carbon footprint. 

Maine Standard Bio Fuels

Maine Standard Biofuels is Maine's only full service Used Cooking Oil collector and biodiesel manufacturer. We have partnered with Maine Standard Biofuels for years to recycle our used vegtable oil and convert it as a "green" renewable fuel. This locally owned and operated company provides us with clean and green storage containers, collects our oil, then donates $0.05 for every gallon we use to local charities such as Habitat for Humanity and Environment Maine. They currectly provide the fuel Oakhurst uses to run their 130 biodiedel fleet! So we are providing the oil used to deliver our milk!