Small Actions, Big Impact: The Power of Individual Students in Tackling Food Waste

There’s no doubt about it—food at Georgetown is a touchy subject. Whether it’s the questionable Olive Branch chicken, Leo’s Taco Tuesdays, or the almost non-existent vegetarian options, Georgetown food has its ups and downs, its strengths (breakfast smoothies) and its flaws. However, for all the lovable idiosyncrasies of the Georgetown dining system, there is one aspect that Georgetown shares with many other universities and dining establishments: food waste.

Food waste in the United States is a growing concern, and is especially heavily concentrated on college campuses. According to the National Defense Resource Council, up to 40% of the food supply in the United States goes uneaten every year, whether due to food loss in the supply chain or simply due to consumer waste. College campuses contribute significantly to this statistic, averaging 142 pounds of wasted food per student, which amounts to millions of pounds of food waste annually. University dining systems also face a number of challenges regarding sustainability, further highlighting the need to address this issue.

I grew up in a culture of fairly strict, zero-waste values. When I didn’t finish my eggs, my mother would remind me of how she only got to eat eggs on her birthday as a child. Unfinished rice on my plate led to stories of poor, hard-working Chinese farmers who spent their days in the rice field. Just above the kitchen sink was a compost bag where I dumped all my fruit and vegetable peels, and next to it was a container filled with boiled egg shells, saved to be used as fertilizer in the garden. My first exposure to the American food service industry was when I got a job working as a dining server at a nearby retirement home. The first few weeks were a huge culture shock for me—I felt uncomfortable throwing away food that a resident had not finished, or watching the chef dump out the leftover soup. However, after months of working there, my attitude began to shift and I grew accustomed to the culture, no longer feeling as guilty about throwing out a plate of half-eaten pasta or letting the sink water run for longer than I needed.

This was the attitude I came into college with, and I came to learn that the on-campus dining was not much different from the retirement home. The culture of waste is still extremely prevalent, although Georgetown is much more active in recognizing it as an issue. For example, the university has implemented the green to-go box program so that people can take their food home instead of throwing it away. The Office of Sustainability has added composting and recycling bins to upstairs Leo’s, in addition to providing compostable cutlery. On-campus student-run organizations have also greatly contributed to the cause. Georgetown SAFE (Students Advancing Food Equity) has recognized that food waste is de facto tied to the issue of food insecurity and has made efforts to address both problems simultaneously. GU SAFE goes on weekly food runs, taking leftovers from on-campus and local restaurants and leaving them in the Hoya Hub for students who have run out of meal swipes or cannot afford to pay for food.

Despite the substantial efforts undertaken by the Georgetown community, there are still policies that Georgetown as an institution can implement and actions that we as individual students should take to tackle the issue of food waste.

We need to consider why people throw out food in the first place. They throw out food for a multitude of reasons: for cosmetics, for taste, or sometimes simply because they are full. By understanding this, we can then create a plan of action for both the supplier and the consumer. On Georgetown’s end, administrators could reduce plate size and focus more on food quality, thus encouraging students to take the amount of food they will actually eat. However, while Georgetown leadership can certainly do more to address the problem, the food system is ultimately demand-driven, so I believe that the responsibility to make change ultimately lies in the hands of the consumers (i.e. us students), by reforming our mentality and thus our habits.

I’m not arguing for a radical transformation, but simply for increased awareness among students of the problem and the fact that we have the ability to effect change. As a Kansas State University study points out, increasing awareness has the potential to tangibly reduce food waste. My hope is that students will keep this issue in the back of their minds as they go about their day, as they go for that second serving of potatoes or pie, and that this simple change in mentality will result in a change in habit, from putting less food on the plate to attending food rescues with organizations like Georgetown SAFE. And if it takes something as horribly drastic as putting up catchy, one-liner posters like “All Taste, No Waste” or “Just Eat It” in Leo’s, then sue me.

This is a tricky subject not to be antagonistic about, as food waste can occur for numerous, completely valid reasons like food safety concerns. However, ultimately, something as simple as food waste awareness can really go a long way.