Don’t Waste Your Time Wasting Food

In a small survey of the students in my Waste Management class at Barnard, every person claimed to believe in the importance of recycling. However, only 40 percent of those same participants actually recycle all of their recyclable waste. Why is there such a disparity? When recycling containers are available on every floor of every building and alternate disposal options exist even in the dining halls, no one should be throwing away recyclable materials.

And yet every day Barnard and Columbia food services generate over 600 pounds of food scrap waste, adding up to approximately 60 tons per year, based on data available on the Columbia Housing and Dining Web site. Making sustainable food choices is about more than just buying local or organic products—it’s about thinking down the line to food waste disposal as well. Life in the city is fast-paced—too many people rush through meals paying little attention to how much food they take and what they ultimately throw away. As a result, tons of food go to waste, filling up trash containers that must be hauled long distances to already crowded landfills. Trash has become another U.S. export and another topic of national shame.

Dining services at Columbia and Barnard, in conjunction with EcoReps, work hard to cut down food waste, by getting rid of trays or using digester machines to decompose organic materials, but there is a role for students as well. By being more aware of the disposal options that exist, Columbia and Barnard students can help to cut our contribution to toxic and already overwhelmed waste landfills.

Reducing our waste is important for many reasons. Since the closing of the Fresh Kills Landfill in 2001, which was the principal dump site for NYC’s waste, the city has had to truck its municipal solid waste long distances to other landfills. The further away the landfill, the more pollution is released from the burning of fossil fuels, and the more greenhouse gases and other toxic gases are released from the decomposition of the waste in the trucks. Once at the landfill, waste is dumped into giant plastic-lined ditches, exposed to the elements, and left to decompose and release even more toxic gases into the environment that create smog and have other hazardous effects. This issue is prevalent throughout the country, and as the number of landfills continues to decline, the U.S. will begin exporting more and more waste to poorer countries that are even less likely to have environmentally safe disposal methods. For this reason, waste reduction is important on college campuses and in the greater community at large.

Barnard and Columbia’s dining services have come a long way over just the past three years in becoming more sustainable. Both Hewitt and John Jay dining halls donate leftover food to City Harvest, a nonprofit organization that works to end hunger in New York, and have pledged to purchase more local food. Purchasing locally reduces the polluting effects of long-distance transportation of goods. Donations to City Harvest keep the dining halls from adding hundreds of pounds of leftover food to landfills. John Jay’s move to go trayless reduces food waste by discouraging students from taking more food than they can eat.

Another example of Barnard’s progress began in the summer of 2007, when Hewitt began using a BioX machine to reduce food waste. The machine processes the organic material and reduces it to carbon dioxide and non-toxic waste water. For the first year, this machine’s use was limited to dining-service employees for the disposal of food scraps and leftovers not sent to City Harvest. This year, Hewitt asked students to sort their food waste so that the machine could also process their scraps. Such an effort could reduce the amount of trash coming from Hewitt by 20 tons a year, 200 pounds a day. Still, while much seems to be getting done, we have a long way to go.

To date, student participation has been disappointing. We can and should be doing better. When students are careless in sorting their waste—throwing bones or other trash into the bin designated for BioX scraps—the BioX machine cannot process the waste properly, causing it to stop running until the problem can be repaired. Because of this, Hewitt employees have said that the student-separated contributions cannot be used in the BioX machine, although students are still being encouraged to sort their trash. If we as students can sort our scraps better, our scraps will again go into the machine.

Unfortunately John Jay does not currently appear to be using a BioX Machine or even ask students to sort food waste upon disposal. Going trayless has cut down the amount of food waste thrown out, but only by about 50 pounds per meal. That leaves approximately 130 pounds of decomposable waste a meal that goes into the trash.

Dining services and EcoReps have worked hard and done their part to make our dining centers more sustainable. Now it’s time for us students to do our part to reduce the amount of our food waste that is sent to landfills. Pay attention to what you take, and sort your waste wherever you can, whenever you can. Everyone’s contributions make a difference.

Waste management is a global issue that must be dealt with now. The U.S. already lags behind other countries, such as Germany and Japan, in enforcing more comprehensive management plans. In Germany, for instance, all households are highly encouraged to compost, and special bins are provided to families to allow the state to collect decomposable materials separate from other trash. Let’s be at the forefront of this movement in our country and put to use those services available to us to reduce our waste.

The author is a Barnard College sophomore.