By Martha Savage
If you had walked to the back of Stonehill’s farm last month, you likely would have been met by the snorts of two two-hundred-pound pigs romping in a pile of food scraps from the Roche Dining Commons.
Although charming, these pigs served more than aesthetic purposes on the Farm; they were an essential component in reducing Stonehill’s food waste.
According to a recent study by Feeding America, 38% of all food produced in the United States goes to waste each year. This is comparable to discarding 92 billion pounds or $473 billion of food annually, directing 145 billion meals straight to America’s landfills.
“Food waste” describes all safely-edible food that is thrown away instead of consumed, and is a primary contributor to global climate change, making up nearly 8% of the world’s carbon emissions.
During a lunch period at the Commons, 93.5 pounds of food waste was produced in just an hour and a half, according to a study conducted earlier this month by Bon Appétit, Stonehill's food service provider. That’s 75 wasted meals in just 90 minutes.
This study “was really helpful in seeing the sheer amount of post-consumer waste” produced on campus, said Stonehill’s Zero-Waste Sustainability Leader Caitlin Henderson ‘26.
Last spring, Student Sustainability leader and President of Students for Environmental Action Emma Worster ‘25, recognized that food waste is a pressing issue at Stonehill, and worked with
Farm Director and Professor of Environmental Science Laurie Mooney to research solutions.
After proposing a variety of options to the administration, Stonehill endorsed the procurement of two pigs, Mary and Joseph, cleverly named by members of the facilities crew.
Mary and Joseph were brought to the Farm as piglets last May. The two “biologically digest the food waste” on campus, said Mooney, as they consume all of the Commons’ pre-consumer food scraps.
“The Farm is always going through so many positive changes,” said Worster, the adoption of Mary and Joseph a hallmark example.
In addition to lowering the campus’s overall food waste, the pigs’ manure worked to boost the nitrogen in the soil, increasing the fertility of the Farm’s ecosystem overall.
Earlier this month, the pigs were slaughtered and the meat was returned to the Farm and dispersed among members of the Stonehill community, primarily being given to the facilities workers who spent time caretaking for the creatures over the past several months.
Although the death of these pigs may be sad, it is simultaneously “the most connected you will ever be with your food,” said Gianna Bertelli '25, a directed study student of Mooney’s and weekly volunteer on the Farm.
Bertelli said that establishing such a connection with the earth and its biological systems is critical to understanding and practicing sustainability.
Massachusetts is set to close all of its landfills by 2030, and current state legislation requires any institution that sleeps over 50 individuals to have a “plan” for food waste, said Mooney. While the legal language of this law is vague in its relationship to sustainability, this legislation makes addressing food waste an unavoidable reality for Stonehill College.
Therefore, the death of Mary and Joseph will require the College to tackle reducing its food waste since the pigs will no longer be fulfilling this role on campus, said Worster.
Mooney hopes to house more pigs at the Farm in the coming spring semester, which would be of financial benefit to the College since they require no financing; due to the pigs’ position as biological digesters and the fact that they are sustained solely upon the dining hall’s food scraps, they are an economically attractive solution to the food waste problem.
Still, the pigs are just one component to mitigating Stonehill’s food waste as they ingest only pre-consumer scraps – this means that all of the food thrown away by students and kitchen staff after it is cooked remains destined for a landfill.
Composting and recycling initiatives targeted at addressing post-consumer waste are currently being rolled out by Stonehill’s Students for Environmental Action Club, but successful implementation of such initiatives will require large-scale compliance on behalf of the student body.
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