Join BU Sustainability and the entire Boston University community for a month-long series of events that promote the importance of protecting our planet. Earth Day 365 will be held during the entire month of April. If you have questions about Earth Day 365, please contact the BU Sustainability team at sustainability@bu.edu.

This year’s events center on three different themes: What We Grow, What We Eat, What We Toss, Reuse and Repair, and Planet, People, Purpose. This year’s events are listed below by theme and date. More events are being added, so look to this page for updates.

What We Grow, What We Eat, What We Toss

Beans for Bean - April 2

Truffles and Trash with Kelly Alexander - April 2

Location: 808 Commonwealth Avenue

Date: Wednesday, April 2nd from 6-7 pm

Hosted by the BU Food Studies Program

Register Here

Join Kelly Alexander as she discusses her book, Truffles and Trash: Recirculating Food in a Social Welfare State.

Kelly Alexander is a writer and an anthropologist of food based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For many years she was a senior editor at Saveur magazine, during which she became the youngest writer to win a James Beard Journalism Award for reporting. Her essays and articles on food have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, The Oxford American, The New Republic, O: The Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, and many other publications. Her dissertation fieldwork focuses on a network of activists, cooks, and volunteers working to recirculate food waste in Brussels, Belgium.

On a fragile planet with spreading food insecurity, food waste is a political and ethical problem. Examining the collaborative, sometimes scrappy institutional and community efforts to recuperate and redistribute food waste in Brussels, Belgium, Kelly Alexander reveals it is also an opportunity for new forms of sociality. Her study plays out across a diverse set of locations—including a food bank with ties to the EU, a social restaurant serving low-cost meals made from supermarket surplus by an emergent immigrant labor force, and a social inclusion program in an urban market with a “zero food waste” pop-up café. Alexander argues that these efforts, in concert with innovative policy, effectively recirculate wasted food to new publics and produce what she terms a “spectrum of edibility.”

According to Alexander, these models face challenges—including reproducing the very power dynamics across race, class, and citizenship status they seek to circumvent. They also mirror the challenges of the everyday operations of the European social welfare state, which is increasingly reliant on NGOs to meet provisioning promises. Yet she finds that they also move the needle forward to reduce food waste across one city, providing an example for major urban centers around the world.

Shred + Recycle Event - April 7 and 8

Sustainable Restaraunt Nights - April 9, 16, 23, and 30

Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking - April 16

Location: 808 Commonwealth Avenue

Date: Thursday, April 16th from 6-7 pm

Hosted by the BU Food Studies Program

Register Here

Join Chef Genevieve Meli as she discusses her book, Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking

Chef Genevieve Meli is an associate professor of Baking and Pastry Arts at CIA. Among the courses she teaches are Individual and Production Pastries, Baking and Pastry Skill Development, and Applied Baking and Pastry Production. She was the youngest-ever chef to earn the Certified Master Baker (CMB) designation and is also a Certified Higher Education Professional (CHEP). Meli is the author of two cookbooks: Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking and Sweet Nature. Outside of the classroom, she volunteers with the Stormville Fire Company Auxiliary and enjoys gardening at her 1800s farmhouse, where she and her husband are raising their son Leonardo.

Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking, written by the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) Chef Genevieve Meli ’07/’23, with a foreword by renowned Chef Eric Ripert, has hit the shelves. The title is Chef Meli’s second work, and the first book to be published by CIA Press, the college’s own publishing imprint. The book showcases an incredible array of mouthwatering desserts, savory baked goods, and more, with an eye toward reducing food waste; utilizing alternative ingredients, grains, and pantry staples; and seasonality in the baking and pastry realm. Baking an Impact is available now at all CIA locations and Amazon. It’s an ideal gift for the sustainably minded baker on your list or for anyone looking to level up their baking skills.

“People don’t often consider sustainability when it comes to baking, in part, because the staples in many of our favorite baked goods—dairy, eggs, and refined flours—are inherently not sustainable because of sourcing and heavy processing,” said Meli. “My purpose behind Baking an Impact is to show how the smallest of changes can make a larger impact than you might expect,” according to Chef Meli.

Baking an Impact includes both sweet and savory recipes. Some of Chef Meli’s favorite recipes from the book are Coffee Coffee Cake, Wildflower Lollipops, Koginut Squash Gourds, and Blue Spirulina Oat Mint Truffles.