The Forbes test drive is an early step in the effort to eliminate all dining hall trays at Princeton. This idea was developed at the beginning of the 2008 academic year from collaboration between Dining Services and campus environmental groups like Greening Princeton and Greening Dining.
Greening Princeton members said that eliminating trays could reduce food waste by 30 percent and would save the energy and water used to wash trays. The elimination of trays may also alleviate logistical problems at Rockefeller, Mathey and Whitman colleges, where the tray conveyor belts are ill-equipped to maneuver trays around corners, Director of Dining Services Stu Orefice said.
Test driving trayless dining
The results of the Forbes experiment will determine the future of the trayless initiative, Orefice added.
“We have discussed the [trayless] program with the Council of Masters. Should the experiment match the objectives of the College, we will institute tray-free dining in the fall at Forbes,” he said, adding that the masters of Butler and Wilson colleges have also expressed interest in instituting tray-free dining.
The waste generated on trayless days will be compared to that of regular days with the same menu.
Students from Greening Princeton will be stationed in the dining halls to gauge the reaction of the students and educate them on the benefits of eliminating trays.
“When I first heard about it, I thought the idea was crazy, that it would never happen, that there would be an uproar,” Greening Princeton co-president Brooks Barron ’11 said.
Joining the trend
The move to trayless dining has become a national trend. Aramark Higher Education Food Services, which provides food to hundreds of dining halls, estimates that more than half of its 500 clients will remove trays from their dining halls this year.
Many schools, including several in the Ivy League, have successfully implemented the trayless policy.
St. Joseph’s College in Maine and Middlebury College in Vermont led the trend, eliminating trays in 2007.
Brown decided to eliminate trays in October 2008. Brown Dining Service’s Director of Administration Ann Hoffman reported in January that the university has reduced its weekly water use by 4,800 gallons since making the change.
The Yale Daily News reported in January that Yale is also considering joining the more than 300 colleges that have implemented or experimented with trayless dining policies.
“A lot of schools have already gotten rid of trays with enormous success,” Barron said. “When students see these schools, they might be more receptive to getting rid of trays.”
In February 2008, Harvard experimented with a “Trayless Thursdays” program in one of its residential dining halls. The month-long program led to a 22 percent decrease in average waste per tray, Harvard University Dining Services spokeswoman Crista Martin said in an interview with the Harvard Crimson in March 2008. Though the initiative was shown to reduce waste, administrators terminated it in March, according to the Crimson.
Princeton has been attentive to this national trend, students said.
“Dining Services has a good track record for staying on the cutting edge of environmentalism. They are really eager and willing to experiment in an intelligent way and implement ideas to make Princeton more environmentally sustainable,” said Henry Barmeier ’10, chair of Greening Dining and student liaison to Dining Services.
Campus reactions
Students from environmental groups on campus said they anticipate some initial resistance from students to the trayless meals.
“It’s natural for students to be skeptical at first or feel inconvenienced,” Barmeier said. “But I think it’s a matter of setting expectations. There is a lot of trayless dining already in the eating clubs, and in those environments people don’t expect trays. If we change the dining culture to tray-free being the norm, then no one will have a problem.”
Greening Princeton members emphasized that this small change could make a big difference.
“Tray-free dining is a visible way of calling attention to small lifestyle changes that make a difference. Though it may not seem like using one less tray can significantly reduce consumption, by just looking around the dining hall, it’s easier to appreciate how even this small action scales up,” Carolyn Edelstein ’10 said.
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