USGA's Food Waste Committee gathered on Oct. 17 to address the problem of food waste on campus. USGA Senator sophomore Xavier Chen started the committee in 2006 after becoming aware of Loyola's wasteful food habits.
The FWC's first meeting focused on finding out how much plate waste Loyola dining halls generate. Plate waste, according to J. Marshall Eames, Ph.D., a professor of environmental studies at Loyola, is "food placed on people's plates that is not able to be reused because of health code violations."
Composting is not a viable means for disposing of these wastes, either. "Fats, oils, proteins and meats can be composted, but they produce issues in terms of rodents and insects," Eames said. "That material is not able to be composted here because of city ordinances. The best thing to do is to just not generate [plate waste.]"
Studies have been conducted in years past by students in Eames's classes to estimate how much plate waste is actually being produced on average. According to these studies, nearly 1,100 pounds of food are wasted each day.
The studies last year found that two-thirds of students surveyed believe food waste is a problem on campus, and 92 percent of these students believe Loyola should do something about it.
Freshman Robert Waz feels that "food waste is a problem because people tend to take an abundance of food and only eat parts of it after realizing how bad it is. If they made fresh food, people would be more inclined to take a certain amount. I will admit to wasting food, a lot of it."
Freshman Michael Wojciechowski believes that "people take too much food because it is buffet style and then end up throwing it out. There is no other option besides buffet style. In the Rambler Room people pay for the food they are going to eat."
The Food Waste Committee is working with a consortium of other organizations to address this issue including: Food Not Bombs, the Hunger Week 2007 Team, members of Eames' classes and the auditors for the University Sustainability Initiative. They have been calculating how much compostable, non-compostable and non-food waste the campus is creating each day.
These figures will go into a report for the Sustainability Initiative in January. The FWC hopes to use these numbers to inform students of their wasteful habits and to curb these habits.
"Much of our waste on this campus is a result of behaviors," Eames said. Other alternatives to buffet style will be looked into once the initial audit is published. The University of Vermont has taken away trays from their dining halls in order to limit waste. The University of Wisconsin at Madison allows their students' meal plans to work at off-campus restaurants so they can receive more variety.
Eames believes the reduction of food waste on campus will benefit everyone. "It benefits students financially, if we can come up with a way that less food is wasted because that at least could help stabilize the cost of the meal plans. And certainly it fits in with the Jesuit mission that we shouldn't be wasting this much food when there are people who are suffering from famine and hunger," he said.
There are benefits to buffet-style dining. With everything prepackaged, not much is wasted on the kitchen side of food preparation. Food is prepared in bulk with little individual packaging.
Aside from food waste, there are other areas where Loyola could better utilize its food resources. Last year the Rambler Room made a deal with Food Not Bombs, so that food still packaged at the end of the night that was not sellable for health reasons could be redistributed to the homeless in the community.
This year the Rambler Room has come under new management. The deal with Food Not Bombs is no longer implemented, but dialogue is taking place to reinstate the arrangement.
Chen has proposed a resolution to USGA to help eliminate catering waste. The resolution would require that any catered event receiving funds from the Student Activities Fund would need to come up with a way to constructively dispose of the catering waste.
With hunger week coming up in November, food waste may become a prominent issue, and people will be watching to see if it has an effect on Loyola students' eating habits. The goal is complete elimination of food waste, not a temporary change in behavior.
With more than three and a half tons of food wasted each week, there is plenty of room for improvement.
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