You might have seen promos around the cafeteria lately advertising the love food not waste event. You might also be wondering what even is this event? Let us explain
Who
Student Volunteers and Food Services
What
A week of promoting the reduction of waste in the cafeteria
Where
The 24/7 cafeteria
When
Mar 6-10 between 11:30-1
Why
To reduce the waste produced through the cafeteria
How
During the week between the designated hours, student volunteers will be standing at the compost stations in the cafeteria. Their job is to reward those with empty plates and to ask the people with stuff on their plates why that is. The purpose of this is identify why so much food goes to waste (that number being 314 kg of food waste everyday).
During the event there will be a table showing us what that much food looks like. The volunteers want to know if something was cooked wrong, too spicy or even just if you took too much food. Their goal is to identify the reasons food goes to waste and find a way to decrease the waste.
Food services is weighed all the food from the 27th of February to the 3rd of March to identify how much waste the cafeteria was producing before the event. Then from the 13th to the 17th they will measure again to see how much the waste was reduced during the event.
Best part? They take the difference of the number of plates of reduced food between week 1 and week 3 and convert that into a food voucher from the United Way for hungry students on campus. So for every less plate of food we throw out after the event, we get a plate donated to someone in need. Last year they gave out 52 meal vouchers based on a 14% reduction in food waste.
That’s pretty awesome, but we can definitely top that this year right?
