On my first trip to the cafeteria at school the other day I noticed that there were no lunch trays. Upon sitting down at a table I noticed a sign that talked about how the school is drastically reducing its carbon footprint by abolishing the plastic lunch trays. I was intrigued at this point and have pondered the information on and off.
Then today I came across an article on CNN that talked about the exact same topic of lunch trays and that it is a growing nationwide movement in college cafeterias. It turns out that each lunch tray requires about 1/3-1/2 a gallon of water to wash, in addition to the detergent. So add that up over the approximately 9,000 students on my campus and you’ll see it’s not small potatos.
The CNN article interviews several students about the change and it sounds like for the most part they don’t like it. But I disagree. I am all for a change like this that will lower our waste and in effect keep costs down as well. Every college student in the nation knows that tuition and fees are spiraling out of control and if this is a way to help the environment and save some money, lets do it.
Another benefit to this is that students are eating and throwing away less food. This could be a very noble effort at reducing or eliminating the “freshman 15″. The eyes are almost always bigger than the stomach when you are presented with an endless buffet of all kinds of food.
For those students who just can’t do without a lunch tray when piling on exorbitant amounts of food, just use one of your oversized and grossly overpriced college textbooks to balance all those calories.
[tags]college, cafeteria, food, buffett, lunch tray, shaun carter, students, lunch, dinner, meal plan[/tags]
I would be interested in the amount of waste generated by plastic and styrofoam plates and to-go containers. Quite frankly I think there are more pressing issues in the cafeteria than conserving water by not washing trays. Water from washing trays can always be collected and turned into grey water to use for non-drinking water functions. Styrofoam, which has potential toxic effects to human and environmental health (including water quality), just goes into a landfill and disintegrates for nearly 1000 years. Water can always be refinded and collected.
Good point Mark, however my cafeteria does not use any Styrofoam or plastic. We have metal forks, spoons and knives and what I assume is ceramic dishes. I imagine most college cafeterias use these types of reusable dishes and utensils because of their reduced carbon impact and lower cost to wash and reuse versus disposable alternatives.
Haha very funny Shaun. You assume most colleges use reusable dishes, definitely not the case. I’ve attended school at a half dozen colleges and NONE of them used reusable dishes and utensils. Yes, occasionally an item or 2 is on an actual plate but the majority of food at every meal is served on disposable dishes.
I’ve been to quite a few college campuses and have never seen any college cafeterias using plastic and styrofoam dishes. Some people have been saying that the cons far outweigh the pros, but I disagree. Eliminating the use of lunch trays help in cutting back on water consumption, reduces energy that would have otherwise been used to operate the dish conveyors, washing machines, etc., and it would reduce the amount of wasted food and over-consumption which can keep away the dreaded ‘Freshman 15.’ Even small thing begins to add up.
Thank god you wrote this! I have to do a report on this and this is the perfect info! God Bless You!