Green Guides - Carolina Dining Services

We are proud to offer front of house composting and recycling bins in our main dining locations, and work hard to educate our guests on how to properly divert waste. Our Green Guides help guests sort their waste between composting, recycling, and landfill to decrease contamination rates and promote more thoughtful waste disposal.

What are Green Guides?

Green Guides are student volunteers that help people sort their waste between compost, recycling, and landfill in Lenoir Mainstreet. This program originally began as a part of Eat Sort Win, our award-winning composting and recycling education campaign where you have the chance win UNC-Duke basketball tickets!

We now hold Green Guide shifts throughout the academic year in an effort to reduce our contamination rates in front-of-house recycling and compost bins! As a thank you, Green Guides receive a free residential meal voucher for each shift they work, which can be used at Chase or Top of Lenoir. You can also receive a free Green Guide t-shirt once you’ve worked three shifts!

Why

Contamination happens when items are sorted into the wrong bins, and it can cause issues such as introducing plastics into soil systems, or causing malfunctions with recycling equipment. This adds additional labor to the waste diversion process, as these items must be sorted out of the waste streams to prevent these issues.

By educating the campus on proper waste sorting, Green Guides help to reduce contamination in our waste streams!

How to Join

Sign up here to be added to our volunteer listserv. We will send out a monthly email with information on upcoming shifts and how to sign up.
You can find upcoming shifts on this spreadsheet, and can sign up by adding your name and email to the shift you’d like to work. Please make sure to double check the location and timing of your shifts – we offer different shift times to accommodate class schedules throughout the week.
Review the Green Guide Training Materials before your shift, so you feel confident in your waste sorting knowledge!

Upcoming Shifts

Note: There are limited spot available for each shift, and they are first come, first serve. Working a shift counts as an entry to our Eat Sort Win sweepstakes, which is limited to one entry per person (therefore your odds of winning will not increase with the number of shifts worked). We will contact you if a shift you signed up for is cancelled.

Tuesday, 10/21/25 at Lenoir Mainstreet