Campus Dining implements changes in Forbes Dining Hall following Food Waste Awareness Week

Changes have been implemented in the Forbes College Dining Hall to reduce the food waste following last December’s Food Waste Awareness Week.

The Food Waste Awareness Week initiative took place between Dec. 9 and Dec. 15 and was led by Greening Dining, a University student club that works with University Dining Services to make dining areas more sustainable,in collaboration with both Campus Dining and Forbes College.

During the week, students in Forbes College dumped all of their uneaten food in one large, weighted bin to raise awareness of mindful eating.

Sarah Salati Bavuso, Senior Special Projects Manager in Campus Dining, noted how pizza in Forbes is now cut in smaller slices and pancakes are now 3 inches wide instead of 4 inches, as a result of the Greening Dining campaign. The project also encouraged dining hall staff to monitor the food produced every day and what goes in the compost bins.

“What you may not notice is that the sausage produced and not consumed at breakfast appears in the specialty scrambled eggs the next day or as pizza toppings too. These are all examples of how the dining hall staff recognized and reacted to areas of opportunity to reduce food waste at the kitchen production level,” she said.

According to Anastas Belev Jr. ’16, a student organizer ofGreening Dining, he and other student organizers kept track of how much food was wasted during every meal.

Sheets with the recorded data were posted in the Forbes dining hall during the week. The data notes that the total amount of food wasted ranges from 115.3 pounds, or 2.40 ounces per person, on Sunday brunch, and 11.2 pounds, or 0. 7 ounces per person, onWednesday breakfast.

The most waste occurred during dinner for five out of the seven days. On average, 34.6 pounds of food was wasted per meal.

Belev explained that having uneaten food be collected in one bin whose weight was then shown on a displayed scale was meant to show students just how much food is uneaten during meals, therebyencouraging non-wasteful habits.

“We think that this [initiative] might have a pretty big impact on people’s mentalities. Maybe next time when they go and take their portion, they’ll be more mindful of the possible waste,” Belev said.

Belev explained that Greening Dining hopes to eventually reach every residential college dining hall though such an expansion may incur logistical challenges, noting how Whitman College’s dining hall may not have the space to support a large bin and that a bin the Buter-Wilcox dining hall may get in the way of ample foot traffic during lunch hours.

A similar campaign already took place in the Rocky-Mathey dining hall in May 2015, he added.

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Patrick Caddeau, Dean of Forbes College, noted the campaign's timeliness given the emerging national awareness of the environmental harm of food waste.

“The reason I was very excited about the project was it gave us the opportunity to share, in a very active way, how you can take steps towards reducing food waste in your own life with students in the Forbes community. The project seemed to be positively received in Forbes,” Caddeau said, adding that residents of Forbes College have been enthusiastic about previous environmentally-conscious programs such as Do it in the Dark and recycling awareness.

Caddeau said he is welcome to the idea of Forbes hosting a waste awareness campaign again in the Spring semester, adding that he hopes non-wasteful actions will be enforced.

“One of the things that we’ve seen is that Forbes does really well in those competitions…but research also shows that when the competition is over, the rates of consumption go back up to their normal level,” he said, “so one of the things we really wanted to think about was how can we encourage people to not only think about this in terms of a competition, but how can they embrace it as a habit that they make a part of their daily routine or their everyday lives.”

Tamanna Ananna ’18, a resident of Forbes, said that the campaign made her more aware of the amount of food she threw away after meals and therein encouraged her to only take from the servery what she could finish.

Natasha Turkmani ’18 said she shares this sentiment. "I think [the campaign] sends a powerful message about how easy it is to waste. By thinking about what we take from the dining hall, we recognize that our food choices make an important difference for the environment," she said, adding that people should have proactive attitudes towards waste reduction every day.

Bavuso noted that, although the campaign is over, students should remain mindful of non-wasteful habits. “Take what you want, but eat what you want. You can always come back for more,” she said.