This semester, as part of the Green Reps, I learned a lot about waste, recycling, and compost. As part of the program, I participated in a composting campaign and audit in the Dining Hall. This is my second blog post, where I share my experience volunteering in uOttawa's Dining Hall.
In February, a team of Green Reps students volunteered for two days in the Dining Hall to help audit the compost created by consumers and to encourage behaviour change.
Why is a compost campaign and audit necessary?
Most students know that the dining hall is zero waste, meaning that the only waste stream available is compost. This has positively affected the quantity of waste produced in the dining hall, but it hasn’t eliminated the problem of food waste. There seems to be a common misconception that composting is a good solution. Don't get me wrong, it is the best solution of all waste and recycling streams (and you should absolutely compost all of your food scraps), but that doesn't mean that it is perfect. The composting process is still resource intensive, it requires big trucks to transport the compost to facilities where it is broken down using water and energy. We should still try to be conservative with our food waste even if it’s being composted.
How we conducted the study:
We stood in pairs near the compost stations to be able to log estimates of the amount of food left on people's plates. We did tallies of completely empty, 25-50% full, 100%. If the student's plate was empty, we would congratulate them for not wasting food. If there was food on their plate, we would ask why. - They were full
- The food was old/unappetizing
- They did not like it as much as they thought they would
- It was cooked improperly.
At the end, we asked students if they had any suggestions for limiting food waste in the dining hall and if they wanted to pledge to end food waste and sign our whiteboard.
Our Observations
Our observations showed that the main reason for waste was that people took too much food and couldn't finish it all. The good news is that this is pretty easy to solve. Behaviour change needs to happen for people to take multiple rounds of smaller portions instead of one large portion. This way, they could gauge their appetite better.
It also seemed like individuals didn't really understand the magnitude of the problem because, in their minds, they were just contributing a little bit to food waste. However, collectively, it adds up to a lot of perfectly edible wasted food every day. If we have more focused education on food waste prevention starting at the beginning of the school year, I think a lot of this waste can be prevented!
~ jennifer walsh, green rep