It’s dinnertime, and after a long day of classes, you walk into the dining hall and grab a tray. The pizza looks delicious, but so do the french fries, orange chicken and pasta. You decide you might as well just grab them all. After sitting down to a tray overflowing with food, you realize that you aren’t quite as hungry as you thought.
Does this sound familiar? You may assume that it’s simply a natural phenomenon to load up a tray full of food and then throw away what you don’t eat. The nutrition and diet crazes in society today place blame on cravings and excess portion sizes. However, the problem with wasting food may lie not with our stomachs but instead with a piece of excessive plastic: the tray.
Studies have shown that students take less food when they don’t use trays. It isn’t simply a matter of “your eyes being bigger than your stomach,” as the saying goes. Students tend to take more right away because they have a tray instead of waiting until they realize they want more to eat. Going tray-less would reduce food waste in the dining halls.
It’s the new trend in green technology, and it’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds. I’m sure you’re saying that you’ve already bought your reusable water bottle, and after reading this you are going to recycle your Daily Bruin newspaper. Isn’t that enough? Actually, it’s not. The “green movement” is revolutionizing the way our generation acts and treats the earth.
Even MTV and VH1 have picked up on the movement, and numerous artists have held concerts to benefit “green causes.” Here at UCLA, there are three separate recycling bins next to each trash can.
This advocacy of change embodies one of the most prevalent aspects of our generation that parallels even the MySpace and Facebook crazes. We’re all about big ideas, but that often causes us to overlook small changes that may have a greater impact. Especially when this change is right in front of you, literally in your hands … trays.
The solution to wasted food is not starving ourselves due to guilt. It is simply understanding that all leftover food is thrown away at the end of the night (with the exception of pastries, which are wrapped up and saved). De Neve Dining Hall and Covel Commons implemented a one-month trial of a compost system in September. All eligible leftover food is put into compost, utilizing the phenomenon of biodegradable waste instead of packing landfills with unnecessary waste. Norberto Llamas, manager of Hedrick Dining Hall, also explained that food preparations are based off estimations from the counts of the previous day. It seems like the dining halls are doing their part to conserve resources.
Llamas explained that students can do their part by going tray-less. It is clear what we are supposed to do, the next step is implementation. Llamas is unsure of exactly how the tray-less system will work; it largely depends on student cooperation and enthusiasm.
The dining halls have not standardized a policy of eliminating trays yet, but plans for a tray-less system should be emerging within the next few months.
Llamas emphasized that no trays would mean, “less plates, less water and less chemicals” would be used by the dining halls.
So what is the impact of going tray-less? Well, it is a simple way to reduce the waste of food, water and chemicals in the dining halls. The unnecessary waste of food should concern us because it is something we can actually change. The dining halls on campus, as we all know, are abundant with food. However, you begin to lose your appetite when you realize that an entire village in a third world country could be fed with the food that we throw away each night.
Many critics of the tray-less movement have brought up the point that it puts restrictions on eating habits of students. However, it is not that the tray-less movement is asking students to take less food overall, it’s just asking them to take less initially. When you go back for separate trips without a tray, you end up wasting less food, but still have as filling a meal as you desire.
This tray-less phenomenon is not uniquely Californian either; New York University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Florida have all implemented tray-less policies, and Penn and Cal Tech have programs planned.
You don’t even have to wait for the dining halls to forbid trays. Simply walk in, grab a plate, and even if you don’t get a salad, know that you’re eating “green.”
If you want to go tray-less then e-mail Brooke Hollyfield at bhollyfield@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.