Most Ohio University students have eaten countless meals at the on-campus dining locations. There are four sit-down dining halls and four grab-and-go locations as well as the option to eat at Baker University Center’s West 82. The process at the each of the sit-down dining halls is the same: enter, grab a tray, follow a line of hungry students where one will pass innumerable food options and load up the tray with whatever foods appeal to you at that moment. There is at least one problem with this system – most students find no reason to limit the amount of food they put on their tray.
Stephanie Marvin is an Ohio junior employed at Boyd Dining Hall; some of her shifts are spent with the trays students return to the kitchen when they are finished with their meal, disposing of the food waste and cleaning the dishes. Typically, according to Marvin, less than one-third of trays returned to the kitchen after each meal are clear of any food waste. Therefore, one could infer that students that go to the dining hall for meals are putting more food on their plates than they can eat. “The food that comes back on trays from the students goes down a garbage disposal for the most part,” says Marvin. “We throw away chicken bones and fruit peels in a trash can and I’m not really sure what is done with the food that wasn’t served at all.” Why is Boyd not composting the food waste collected its dining hall when we have compost bins at multiple locations across campus can be contributed to the size of OU’s compost facility.
According to OU’s Interim Sustainability Coordinator Erin Sykes, compost is only being collected at three campus locations at this time and the only dining hall where compost is being picked up at is Shively. The other two locations are Baker and the Central Food Facility which houses a bakery, test kitchen and vegetable preparation site and acts as a central food warehouse. Food waste from all other dining locations goes to a landfill. The compost system currently in place can hold 28 tons of compostable material annually, which is roughly 50% of the food waste generated at OU, according to the OU Office of Sustainability’s website. “We have received federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to expand our compost site which we anticipate will allow us to pick up from 100% of our dining facilities,” says Sykes. The date that the Office of Sustainability plans to have the new compost site up and working was not given but, the sooner the better.
In the meantime, the sustainability officials have been trying out different methods of reducing the amount of food waste generated at the dining halls. Waste auditing is one method that Sykes and her colleagues have been using to look at the effect portion size has on food waste. Ways that they have studied this effect include half-portion nights, offering food samples, removing a number of trays from use and hosting an education night on the issue of food waste in sustainability.
Focusing on portion sizes seems to be a good starting point. According to Marvin, one or two “spoonfuls” constitutes a portion size at the dining halls. “I have never personally been asked to give someone a smaller portion,” she says. “I think that it is more normal for people to ask for more.” It is common to walk through an OU dining hall and see students with a tray full of food fit to feed a family of four. Sykes reports that on half-portion nights, the amount of food waste was slightly decreased. If that is the case, then it seems logical that this should be a common practice and not just done on select nights.
One reason that trays are being overfilled could be that the student wants to try a new food item. To combat this problem, the Office of Sustainability tried offering samples of the items offered that meal.
Another cause could be that some students do not have ample time to eat a meal between classes and while the dining hall is still open for said meal; thus, these students load up trays on the first trip through the dining line because they will not have time to go back for seconds if they’re still hungry. Multiple solutions exist for this problem; the first is allowing students more grab-and-go options and has gone into effect this quarter (Winter 2011) with the opening of a grab-and-go at Jefferson, previously just a dining hall. Grab-and-go gives students the ability to get a meal at hours of the day in between mealtimes when the dining halls are closed and sets a limit on the amount of food each student can take with him/her. Whether or not the opening of another grab-and-go this winter has decreased the amount of food waste is yet to be determined.
Overflowing trays could also be caused because students are trying to eat their money’s worth of food at the dining halls. A majority of students swipe their OU identification card to pay for a meal when they enter a dining hall; students never have to know just how much money each meal would cost if it were paid for in cash. Rumors circulated last academic year that if one paid in cash to go to dinner at Shively, the receipt would read $12. Whether or not that figure is correct is irrelevant; students were sent into frenzy and began trying to eat more food. Reducing meal plan prices would most likely lead many students to eat less food.
There are times when one student can be seen carrying multiple trays while traversing through the dining hall. The Office of Sustainability attempted to reduce food waste by reducing the number of available trays in the dining halls at mealtime. In doing so, many students were forced to carry plates of food and thus, were able to carry far less than they could with a tray. Information was not given as to whether or not this was an effective practice in reducing waste.
Regardless of the many shortcomings of the amount of food waste generated at Ohio University dining locations and the trials done to overcome them, the root of the problem lies in students being misinformed. Sykes says that “an education night” was held. More education nights should be held. Students need to know what is going on – they need to know that the food they are putting on their trays and then choosing to discard is not being composted (unless they are eating at Shively or Baker). Right now, there are students who believe that everything they put in a bin labeled “Compost” is making it to OU’s compost site. Whether or not those students’ waste ends up there is a coin toss. Students would make more calculated decisions at on-campus dining locations if they knew the consequences of their choice to waste food.
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