By Eco Ambassador Katelyn Koenig
Wondering why we’re asking you to sort your waste this evening? You’ve come to the right place!
During the fall semester and now once again in spring, Eco Ambassadors set up weigh stations in the dining hall to track the amount of waste that students produce in an average dinner period from 6:30-8 pm. We swap out the usual waste bins for large, plastic containers to collect and separate all kinds of waste—edible and inedible food waste, trash, and liquid waste—and to weigh them as they fill up.
Last semester, we weighed over 100 pounds of waste disposed of in just an hour and a half. Almost 90% of that was edible food waste—dishes of rice and quesadillas, beef, and bowls of salad. Comparing that to the number of people that swiped into the dining hall, each person disposed of two ounces of waste on average, over a pound of waste being disposed of every minute.
The goal today’s Weigh the Waste event, which happens to fall during the Campus Race to Zero Waste, is to improve from last semester. There are plenty of strategies for thi:
- Try to take smaller servings to reduce leftover food
- Ask servers to give you more precise amounts
- Reduce the number of dishes you get at once — remember, you can always go back for more!
During Campus Race to Zero Waste, let’s work at establishing more conscientious food and waste habits that we can continue well beyond this event!