Food Waste Awareness Day: A visual reminder of the food we waste

Plates of uneaten food lined the walkway in front of the carousel in the Wood Dining Commons on Nov. 3 as part of EnAcT and Dining Service’s Food Waste Awareness Day.

EnAcT, which is short for Environmental Action Team is an organization that works to promote environmental conscientiousness and education on campus. The idea for Food Waste Awareness Day, though, explained EnAcT Vice President Natalie Warhit ‘19, was first started by last year’s dining sustainability intern, Paul Corgan, in hopes of raising awareness by displaying how much food is wasted. Both Warhit and President Tom Littrell ’18, held the program again this year with that same goal in mind.

From 12:15-1:15, Littrell, Gwen Kelly ’18, and Elan Zebrowitz ’18, conducted interviews, stopping students as they went to the carousel to drop off their plates, asking them why they were throwing out their food and if they understood the impact the food waste had on the environment. Most students simply said that they had gotten too much food, and when asked to guess how much food was wasted most students guessed approximately 35-40 percent, which was the correct answer.

“[The results of the survey show] that awareness of the existence of food waste may not necessarily be the main problem,” said Warhit. “But rather that students to do not feel a personal connection to the problem.”

Evan Rehrig, the marketing manager of the for Muhlenberg Dining, agreed with Warhit.

“Individually, I don’t think people realize the impact that they’re having,” said Rehrig. “But you take one chicken breast, you take one serving of rice, you take a cupcake, you take part of a Caesar salad, and you have a full meal.”

In the kitchen, the rest of the EnAcT team, including Warhit for a time, worked side-by side with the kitchen staff to collect the discarded food, and assembled them together to create plates of whole meals, which were then wrapped in cling wrap and brought out to a table in the walkway. Portions that were too small to be plated were sorted into one of six categories—meats and cheeses; fruits and vegetables; grains, breads and pasta; mixed foods; liquids; and paper, and dumped in a bucket with the corresponding label. The contents of each container were weighed at the end of the hour. Categorizing food allows EnAcT and Dining Services to calculate how much energy was required to make that food and how much energy could have been saved had that food not been wasted. By the end of the one-hour experiment, one lengthy table was filled with meals.

“What we’re putting out on display right now is on a Thursday afternoon for half an hour,” said Rehrig.

Dining Services also counted how many people swiped into the dining hall between 11:30-12:00 and, assuming it takes 45 minutes to eat a meal, the team divided the food waste in buckets by the total amount of people who swiped in during that time period, to get the average amount of food wasted per person. Over the course of half an hour, 277 people entered the dining hall. Between 12:15- 12:45, diners generated a total of 135 pounds of edible and paper waste, which averages out to 7.84 ounces of waste per individual. Taking that same ratio over the full peak lunch time (11:00-2:00), they estimated that a total of 550.64 pounds of waste is generated.

From a monetary standpoint, this is essentially throwing away money, as Jon Middleton, Director of Culinary Operations, points out.

“We’re wasting 40 percent of the food that we’re serving here,” said Middleton, “I’m managing a budget, so I’m not looking to take 40 cents out of your pocket and put it in mine. I’m looking to take that 40 cents on every dollar and put it to better use. So if you could give me back 40 percent that’s 40 percent more, 40 cents in every dollar that I can now think about investing in more local, more organic, more sustainable.”

Middleton and EnAcT hope to move this experiment outside of the Muhlenbubble, as it’s not a problem just on campus.

“The thing is that food waste is going on on a huge level,” said Middleton, “and the companies that are producing this food, they don’t care what we do with the food.. If we’re wasting 40 percent of the food that we’re producing, and let’s just take the cattle industry, the beef industry, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, if we just use round numbers and say they’re a billion dollar industry, if we say that we’re going to reduce the amount of beef that we waste, and we waste 40 percent less, we’re taking 400 million dollars out of their pocket, and they don’t want to see that money go away.”

Middleton plans to work with EnAcT to spread the word to local businesses first.

“There’s a lot of talk about presenting this to other colleges in the Lehigh valley,” said Middleton, “all Sodexo places, possibly the Lehigh Valley Hospital network and other areas of business, and Sodexo of the Lehigh Valley and have them conduct the same experiment.”

As Littrell, Warhit, and even Corgan say, it’s all about spreading awareness.

“What it [EnAcT] really endorses is consciousness,” said Littrell, “in just saying ‘hey, think about your impact, and how you can make life better for everyone around you and their kids and so forth. So even like the little thing that you’re doing, like turning off the lights, even if you think that’s not going to make an impact, just the fact that you thought about it and may turn off the lights, and somebody may see you and repeat that action, chain reaction.”

EnAct is the student organization responsible for campaigns such as “Just Tap it,” and Watts Your Bergtricity. They won the President’s Award at Convocation in Spring 2010. Anyone interested in joining them in their next project or starting their own sustainability effort can contact them on Facebook or their Slack at bergenact.slack.com.

All photos courtesy of Chloe Gravereaux