Bon Appetit stresses importance of not wasting food
Bon Appetit is asking all students this week to scrape all their uneaten food and beverages into a series of five-gallon buckets adjacent to the dishroom prior to putting their trays into the dishroom window.
Estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggest that at least 18 percent of all municipal solid waste that reaches landfills is food. That waste amounts to 31 million tons per year. Researchers estimate 40 to 50 percent of the food produced in this country is never consumed, owing to losses along the entire food chain.
We will be weighing the wasted food every day and posting the results near the dishroom. Last week, we saved and weighed all the scrapings from each tray and averaged 311 pounds of wasted food/beverages per day. Our goal is to request everyone pay closer attention to the foods and beverages you take in order to reduce waste by 25 percent by the end of the semester. If we can together accomplish that, we will have prevented more than 8,000 pounds of uneaten food from reaching our landfills.