Elm, Wetherell Dining Halls Show Decreased Food Waste
Before winter break, students and faculty diners were encouraged to dump their leftover food and liquid into clear bins in Elm and Wetherell dining halls. Over the course of one Wednesday lunch, half-eaten sandwiches, soup and chunks of meat filled the bins and the noxious odors wafted throughout the entrance of the dining halls. The remains of meals repulsed some members of the Exeter community. Others avoided scraping off their food into the bin and hurriedly put their plates onto the trays.
Still, the majority of the school engaged in the school-wide food waste audit and acknowledged that food waste is neither good nor pretty. As a result, the overall food waste from both Elm and Wetherell decreased by 14 percent in the following days. Elm Street dining hall reduced its food waste by 15 percent, producing 1809 pounds of food waste from Dec. 11 to Dec. 15, compared to the 2133 pounds of food waste produced from Nov. 13 to Nov. 17 when there was no school-wide food waste audit. Similarly, Wetherell dining hall reduced its food waste by 10 percent, producing only 1112 pounds from Dec. 11 to Dec. 15 compared to the 1248 pounds of food waste from Nov. 13 to Nov. 17.
As Environmental Proctor co-head Ashley Lin explained, “People seemed to be more cautious about their food waste that week, and it showed through the results.” Senior Jane Li, the other co-head of the E-Proctor Dining Hall Committee agreed, noting how the community became more aware of the food waste. In light of the positive results from the food waste audit, Li said, “Everyone should feel incredibly proud of themselves! Compliment yourself and compliment your friends when you see a clean plate.”
“If we continue to work together, we, as a community, can strive to reach a new standard of minimized waste.”
As part of the E-Proctor Dining Hall Committee’s campaign to reduce the school’s food waste, the school-wide audit sought to start conversation about excess and promote food waste reduction. During the two weeks before winter break, Lin and Li, along with other members of the E-Proctor Dining Hall Committee, worked with both dining hall staffs to implement a school-wide initiative.
During the first two weeks, the dining hall staff measured post-consumer food waste, and the same menu was used for both weeks, with a one-meal exception. Students and faculty were encouraged to scrape food off their plates and into clear bins placed at the entrance to each dining hall so they could see a visual representation of how much food the school was wasting. The hope behind this self-cleanup was that students and faculty would become more aware of how much food they were wasting and try to throw away less food or take less food to begin with.
Both the E-Proctor Dining Hall Committee and dining hall staff, including dining hall managers Heidi Brousseau (Wetherell) and Michael Como (Elm), support reductions in food waste through school-wide audits like this because of its many benefits. From the E-proctors’ point of view, reducing food waste meant protecting the environment and saving natural resources that could be used by others in the future.
“There are people in the world going hungry everyday, yet we throw away food like it’s nothing. We are adding to the landfills and combustion centers when we waste food, and that creates more unwanted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat in the atmosphere. This is responsible for climate change, which is one of the most prevalent problems today,” Lin explained.
There is also an economic incentive to reduce food waste. According to Li, a whole day’s worth of food waste was eliminated during the second week even with the extra food from the Hawaiian-themed lunch. As a result, the dining hall staff would be able to order less food to begin with if less food is wasted and in the long run, would save money. Como explained that reducing food waste not only “saves money for the Academy but allows the dining hall to reallocate funds.”
Li advocated for students to be more aware of their food waste and at least try to reduce the amount of food they take. Li said, “The line usually dies down after the lunch time rush, and unless you have to eat as quickly as possible, you should be able to go back for food when there’s less of a line.” Li hopes that students and faculty will resist the instinct to grab more than they will eat, and feel proud when they take less food, finish their plates and ultimately reduce waste.
Students expressed that they found the food waste bins unpleasant. Others were unsure about whether the audit would lead to any reductions in food waste. Tour guides found that the prominent displays of the bins filled with leftover food scraps at the entrances of the dining halls could reflect poorly on the school. Senior Louisa Bartkovich mentioned that, “one of the facts we [tour guides] mention is that our [dining hall] is one of the best among all prep schools and even in the country and offers a variety of food,” but seeing the food bins “may make the tour second-guess the quality of Exeter’s dining hall.”
That being said, the audit was still highly effective in sparking conversation about food waste, according to members of the E-proctor committee. Upper Grace Gray, who was responsible for supervising the students and faculty as they scraped their food off into the bins, noted how “people came up to me and talked about how the waste audit made them more conscious about wasting food.”
Currently, the Dining Hall Committee is expanding upon their food waste audit project in hopes of increasing awareness of the amount of food students are throwing out. Thus, the Dining Hall Committee has started to photograph and document the amount of waste on student and faculty plates and plans to eventually make collages that students and faculty can see and reflect upon. Lin believes “results come with visuals” and hopes that the released results of the food waste audit and the photographs of food waste will inspire further food waste reduction.
Li added that the Dining Hall Committee is “considering implementing a system in which students have to scrape their plates instead of just putting their plates on a tray or conveyor belt, in order to always remind students of food waste.”
For now, the school-wide food waste audit proved the effectiveness of such a system being implemented, paving the way for further food waste reduction that will benefit both the community and environment. In the following weeks, Li and Lin hope that the consciousness of this aspect persists. As Gray described, “If we continue to work together, we, as a community, can strive to reach a new standard of minimized waste.”