Waste Not, Want Not
Our environmental efforts need to extend to reducing food waste
There’s something surreal about staring at what seems like a never-ending plate of food when your stomach feels it’s about to burst. You’re either dreading having to eat another disgusting bite or aching to get one more spoonful in your mouth but knowing you physically can’t. Inevitably, we’ve all ended up in a situation where we’ve had to scrape off our plate into the garbage.
With 119 billion pounds of food wasted every year in the United States, according to Feeding America, food waste is an issue much bigger than any single person. But reducing that startling amount is something we can start doing on campus in a joint effort between the administration and student body.
Where does all this food end up going? Unfortunately, a lot ends up going to the bins. The Santa Clara chapter of the Food Recovery Network has been striving to reduce the amount of wasted food since its inauguration in 2014. In accordance with their partnership with the network,the Bon Appétit staff packages “all leftover food from dining services and events for volunteers to pick up twice a week and deliver it to Martha’s Kitchen–a soup kitchen in San Jose.”
Based on the chapter’s current food tracking form, a total of 39,084.25 pounds have been donated since 2014–food that would have otherwise ended up in the trash.
Professor Claudia McIsaac’s Winter 2023 Critical Thinking and Writing Ⅱ class collected data regarding food waste at Santa Clara University. A survey given to 100 students–the majority of responses coming from first-year students–48% of surveyed students stated they would order smaller portions at Benson if they were cheaper.
Professor Stephanie Hughes and members of the Sustainable Living Undergraduate Research Project (SLURP) team are working to help fight this food waste problem by proposing two potential solutions.
“One proposal we are working on is a portion size pilot program where a selected station at Benson would have differing plate sizes to choose from to address how much is being served and dumped,” states Emily Moya, a member of SLURP. “We’re currently thinking of talking to Benson staff in order to reduce any harm the new pilot could cause the workers from placing too many tasks and stress on them.”
The current dining system perpetuates a divide between those who run out of dining points by the middle of the quarter and those who finish the quarter with thousands of dollars worth of points sitting in their account. This imbalance could be remedied with a wider variety ofa wider variety of dining plan tiers for first years than the basic and preferred plans or some sort of donation or transfer system for points.
“We’re currently working on a meal point transfer system, but software issues and getting into contact with the right people are proving to be difficult,” said Moya.
Negligence and ignorance also prove to be obstacles to fighting waste. In a focus group conducted by McIsaac’s class, one interviewee explained, “I still think many students would just put their food in whichever bin is not full.”
“A lot of students don’t know whether to put a certain item into landfill, recycle, or compost, bearing in mind the different regulations for composting and recycling in Santa Clara County,” explained Hughes.
“I think if we can keep educating that, for instance, this goes in compost and that shouldn’t will help the issue of food waste here at Benson a lot,” stated Annika Sodergren, a SLURP member.
In 2021, the United States had 91 million surplus food tons with 44.1 million tons consisting of residential waste and 18.02 million tons from retail and food service, according to Refed. That’s a staggering amount, especially when it significantly leans towards residential waste. Wasting food is a global problem, and it needs to be addressed by first looking at our own food waste patterns.
There is no black-and-white answer. But we all need to keep in mind how we as a campus and as individuals can do better to battle food waste, and SLURP is taking the first step.