Sustainability Efforts at the Denver Zoo

LEED Platinum • Water Conservation • Alternative Transportation • Zero Waste • Local Food • Energy Conservation

Local Food

To ensure that our animals are receiving top quality foods and to reduce the transportation impacts of transporting fruits and vegetables, the commissary department works hard to increase our purchase of local foods from Colorado farms. During the 2011 and 2012 summer seasons, our commissary purchased over 400 thousand pounds of Colorado produce and hay. In addition to purchasing local foods, Denver Zoo has been growing our own produce at multiple sites throughout the zoo. By providing local foods for our animals we are ensuring that they get the most nutritional value possible from their fruits and veggies. Once picked, produce begins to lose its nutrients and may even lose up to forty five percent of its nutritional value by the time it reaches a grocery store simply because of the time it takes to transport from farm to store (Institute for Food Research). By buying our produce from Colorado farms, we are ensuring that the transportation time for our produce is significantly cut down, thus guaranteeing that our animals are receiving top nutritional benefits, taste and texture in their favorite foods.

By purchasing foods grown in Colorado, the commissary department is also helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with transporting produce. We purchase Colorado produce through a local distributor, LoCo Foods. LoCo Foods works as centralize shipments so that produce from multiple local farms can be distributed all at once instead of requiring separate trips for individual products. Additionally, by sourcing from this local Fort Collins company, we can ensure that produce is supplied by a responsible, sustainable company that ships at full capacity. Taking care to source local produce will help us meet our zoo-wide goal to reduce our impact through pollution prevention, resource utilization, waste reduction and socially responsible purchasing.

Our horticulture and grounds departments have also developed two major produce gardens behind Primate Panorama and Tropical Discovery. These two gardens provide herbs, vegetables and greens for our mammals and fruits, edible flowers and greens for our reptiles, respectively. Pollination at the Primate Panorama garden is aided by on-site, professionally-managed bee hives and both gardens use compost generated at the zoo. Denver Zoo staff continue to work towards innovative gardening developments including vegetable gardens that incorporate recycled materials and pilot tests of aquaponic systems. To encourage Denver children to foster an appreciation for, and a connection to fresh fruits and vegetables, Denver Zoo has developed the Garden to Zoo program. Through this innovative program, children at Denver Public Schools (DPS) are growing produce for the zoo's animals and learning about the environment around them through programs developed by DPS. In the 2012 season, Denver Zoo received over two hundred pounds of produce for our animals through the Garden to Zoo program.

Download Local Food Flyer (pdf)