James Iannone

Credit: Cara Ferrentino

James Iannone knows Harkness Café inside and out. As Restaurant Associates Director of Operations at Harvard Law School’s dining hall, James has his eye on all aspects of daily operations, overseeing staff, tracking finances, sales, and café supply usage. Still, James can sum up his job succinctly; it’s “to run the café as efficiently and effectively as possible.” With this goal in mind, it’s been a natural step for James to become involved with the Harvard Law School (HLS) Green Team and to take on café waste reduction projects.

A chef by training and a former restaurant owner, James has also worked selling restaurant equipment and food; in total he has over 20 years of experience in the food industry, both in the kitchen and in the front of the house. Still, the things he’s done to target the Hark’s biggest waste generators–the use and in-house disposal of plastic take-out containers and paper cups–have been simple. After hearing feedback from the HLS community about these items at the school’s first Green Team meeting in February, James and the rest of the Hark staff rearranged reusable dishware to make it more intuitively available and placed prompts reminding café users to use disposable containers only for take-out. In order to encourage the HLS community to use fewer paper coffee cups, James changed the price of coffee and tea to $1.00, down from $1.30, for individuals who bring their own mugs (any size).

More than cups and take-out containers are targets. In order to reduce the amount of food that winds up in the trash, James recently worked with other Green Team members to promote the Hark’s back-of-the-house composting; new signs at the dish drop encourage diners to leave food and napkins on their trays. James is also working to transition the Hark away from individual condiment packets; law students can now sweeten their caffeine using bulk containers.

Looking ahead, it’s easy for James to rattle off a list of upcoming sustainability projects. These include developing food-focused table tents for Earth Week (April 20-24), reducing utilities in the Harkness kitchen, tracking and publicizing the café’s purchase of non-recyclable materials (i.e. paper cups and plastic utensils), and analyzing food preparation and consumption data to help reduce food waste.

James says when thinking about sustainability he focuses on the “long-term impacts” of offering or consuming a particular food or product. Since becoming involved with the Green Team and Hark sustainability projects, James says he and his wife and three kids steer away from buying bottled water and are much more careful about recycling in their home.