ST. CLOUD -- There is something cooking inside Garvey Commons at St. Cloud State University and it's not for the students.

Chartwells Food Service has been making homemade dog treats by using left over ingredients from their daily meals.

Executive Chef Chuck Gibbons says they've only been making the treats from about a week, and they don't last long.

One of our sister schools at the University of Wisconsin-Superior started the program and shared it with us. So we decided it would be a really go way to utilize some of our leftover food waste.

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Gibbons says each cash register on campus has a bowl full of treats for students and staff to take for their pets.

He says they've even started donating treats to places like the Tri-County Humane Society.

The treats have like a 3-4 week shelf life, so I was worried about us not going through them fast enough so I knew they had pets up there so just dropped them off.

The dog treats take about three hours to make from start to finish and they are created about twice a week.

Gibbons says since the program has been so popular he can see SCSU continuing it for years to come.

Anything that we can do to be good partners with the campus community, why wouldn't we do that. That's what it's all about, that partnership with the university.

Chartwells Food Service has made about 5,000 dog treats since they began roughly a week ago.

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