Watermelon rinds, chicken bones, pizza crust and half a plate of spaghetti land in the trash. Now add full bagels, cake, steaks and potatoes.

This year, Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency has estimated Syracuse University will send 400 tons of food waste to its composting site in Camillus, N.Y. That’s much more than any year before. It’s roughly the size of 80 elephants.

OCRRA’s estimate for this year is outrageous, even if it is being saved from the landfill. Four hundred tons means that a lot of food is still being wasted, being picked up and not eaten, just to be thrown away.

The SU Sustainability Division saw this problem and has challenged it with a new campaign to reduce tray waste in the dining centers. Tray waste, or food waste created by patrons of the dining centers, has been pinpointed as the biggest factor for the large amount of food waste.

As an intern at the Sustainability Division, I work in a group with two other interns, working to bring sustainable measures to the dining centers. This semester we started out with a survey and tray waste audits, both to measure students’ understanding and actions in the dining centers.

The next step of our campaign is to work through education, creating a general understanding of the position we are in at SU. The survey and audits have helped us tremendously in gaining perspective of diners.

Mainly we found that students could not identify what tray waste is, what is done with it at SU and how they can cut back waste. Many were not aware of how much a small bit of waste affects a large school.

Food waste in the dining centers, from the kitchen and from the diners’ tray waste is sent to OCRRA multiple times a week to be composted. When it is finished, Physical Plant brings the compost back to campus to use around the grounds.

Tray waste, the brunt of the food, is comprised of three groups: untouched food, food scraps and inedible rinds. The third group should be the majority of the compost, yet is the smallest amount we found throughout the audits.

Inedible rinds consist of melon rinds, grape stems and any other inedible food parts. Food scraps involves any half-eaten food — something that could have been taken at a smaller portion, perhaps. The third group — untouched food — is exactly what it sounds like: food that was thrown away that was never bitten.

With food scraps and untouched food in first and second places, respectively, everyone can take easy steps to reduce food waste. First: Taste, don’t waste, by trying out a small portion of food before piling it high on your plate.

Second: Try dining without a tray. You can still hold the proper nutritional amount of food, and it saves energy and water (from not washing it), as well as cuts back food waste without you even trying.

Third: Take a second trip up to the line. Exercise a little by walking up to get more food from the dining center. You may not even be hungry after you finish your plate, so why take more at the beginning?

The fourth step is easiest of all: Become more aware of your surroundings and habits by watching your eating lifestyles. By constantly exposing yourself to new and old information, you can be in touch with the world and increase sustainability on our campus. Not only will it have positive environmental effects, but positive economical effects.

Let’s treat the dining centers like our home and give them the respect they deserve.

Meg Callaghan is a junior environmental studies major and writing minor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at mlcallag@syr.edu.

 

Published on October 10, 2012 at 1:00 am