Trayless dining

Alfred U, my alma mater, has eliminated trays from the dining halls. Turns out they're not the first - a quick google shows them joined by Penn State, Colby College, Saint Joseph's in Maine, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some schools have done the trayless thing as a one-off awareness raising event; others, like Alfred, plunged in head-first. No trays, starting today, was their announcement.

The dining halls are still all-you-can-eat, but diners have to make the decision: Is this worth taking now? Is that worth coming back for?

Compare to the usual M.O. of a student at lunchtime:

"They used to come in, grab a tray, grab something from the grill, grab something from the hot line, get a couple of drinks, put a couple of cookies on their tray. Then they'd sit down," Leckie [a dining services manager] said. "We noticed huge amounts of things coming back. Half a wrap, half a burger."

And the best part - the new system actually works. Here's what they found at Alfred:

The results from two separate test dates on Alfred University’s campus were astounding: Simply by not offering trays, food and beverage waste was reduced by 30 percent, and sometimes up to 50 percent, he said.

“At Alfred University, that equates to approximately 1,000 pounds of solid waste and 112 gallons of liquid waste on a weekly basis,” he said. “That’s a significant amount of waste – more than 15 tons a year in solid waste – that we can keep from going into the county landfill.”

Sustainability in food requires looking at the whole life cycle, from production through transportation to what happens after it's served. Supposedly 25% of food cooked in the US winds up in the garbage (unsupported statistic alert) so this is not a minor issue.

The important question now is - without trays to steal, what will students use when they want to go sledding?
Posted by Beth on January 24, 2008
(link)
Kristen King (mail) (www):
Trash bags. Large trashbags. That's what we always did, anyway. ;)

At any rate, just wanted to pop over and thank you for participating in the Inkthinker Query Challenge. I'm glad to have you on board as we head into the second month!

Kristen
www.inkthinkerblog.com
2.5.2008 10:41pm