Spring Break
Trays are gone, baby, gone
Bryan Murphy
Issue date: 9/5/08 Section: Commentary
Alexia Lalande, a 5th-semester fine arts major, reaffirmed Wansink's findings. "When I had a tray, I would have a four-course meal by the time I got to the end of the first row of entrees - but if there was something good in another row, I'd take that as well … even though I had plenty to eat."
It would not be a disaster if the newly-precious "real estate" of a single plate forced us to scout and only to take things we like most, rather than piling food onto a tray that we'll later realize we don't even want and either force ourselves to stomach, or toss out.
Americans throw away up to a quarter of the food we prepare each year after that food has been shipped an average of 1,500 miles to arrive at our shelves. Farming takes energy, transport takes energy and food preparation takes energy - meanwhile we all complain about the soaring demand for and cost of oil, which, after all, is simply an energy source.
With environmentalism as chic as it is these days, I wish it were the students pushing for conservation and not the administration.
"It's an example of why it's going to be so hard to get solid conservation practices [adopted] in the United States," said Michael Sanders, a 9th-semester biological sciences and pre-veterinary double major. "This is a college campus, in a pretty liberal state… and [we're] like, 'Man, this is too much work to save thousands of pounds of food.'" The trayless policy is cost-effective and relatively low-sacrifice, and it doesn't preclude the University from doing more for the environment later - though re-adopting trays would be doing less.
Is trayless as convenient as trayful? No. But is it a better idea? Yeah. "We affect our environment, our environment affects us in turn; for years, we've been wasting food, using up energy, using up water and now there's this backlash," said Misset. "The University is changing its behavior in response to the environment… as students, universities are our environment and we need to change our behavior to deal with that. It's just a matter of thinking about the greater good."
It would not be a disaster if the newly-precious "real estate" of a single plate forced us to scout and only to take things we like most, rather than piling food onto a tray that we'll later realize we don't even want and either force ourselves to stomach, or toss out.
Americans throw away up to a quarter of the food we prepare each year after that food has been shipped an average of 1,500 miles to arrive at our shelves. Farming takes energy, transport takes energy and food preparation takes energy - meanwhile we all complain about the soaring demand for and cost of oil, which, after all, is simply an energy source.
With environmentalism as chic as it is these days, I wish it were the students pushing for conservation and not the administration.
"It's an example of why it's going to be so hard to get solid conservation practices [adopted] in the United States," said Michael Sanders, a 9th-semester biological sciences and pre-veterinary double major. "This is a college campus, in a pretty liberal state… and [we're] like, 'Man, this is too much work to save thousands of pounds of food.'" The trayless policy is cost-effective and relatively low-sacrifice, and it doesn't preclude the University from doing more for the environment later - though re-adopting trays would be doing less.
Is trayless as convenient as trayful? No. But is it a better idea? Yeah. "We affect our environment, our environment affects us in turn; for years, we've been wasting food, using up energy, using up water and now there's this backlash," said Misset. "The University is changing its behavior in response to the environment… as students, universities are our environment and we need to change our behavior to deal with that. It's just a matter of thinking about the greater good."
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