Where your food waste goes from here
The life of a tray in Burwash is cyclical. It starts off stacked in the racks, idle, until it is lifted and weighted under piles of plastic plates, cups, and cutlery. Globs of food and cups precariously full of Coke slide around on the tray as it’s set on a table next to a napkin dispenser that reads: “Vic Food Services promotes locally grown foods” and “100% recycled paper means less impact.”
Then, it’s dropped onto the conveyer belt, rolling past three posters proclaiming statistics like: “40% of food produced in Canada goes to waste,” and “20% of Canada’s methane emissions come from organic waste in landfills,” and “250 billion cubic meters of water is used to produce wasted food globally.”
The tray then navigates the tangled belt to reach hands who scrape leftover scraps into a green compost bin and unburden it from its plates, cups, and cutlery. It plunges into the soapy depths of the dishwater, is dried, and then is carted back up to its racks, idle once more.
The three posters by the conveyer belt are the only ones in Burwash reminding students about the impact of the food they throw out. They hang where students leave.
Ajay Sharma, the manager of hospitality services for Victoria University for the past three years, wants more posters. He asked VUSAC’s Sustainability Commission* for them last month. He would like to put them “just where the pick-up trays are,” he says. That way, it can be an earlier, more effective reminder to students.
“It’s just a matter of awareness,” he says. “It becomes very difficult on our part to tell students to not eat as much or not to take as much. All we can really say is, ‘All you care to eat’ rather than ‘All you can eat.’”
Awareness is one essential step in combatting food waste. But food waste cannot be reduced to such a simple solution. According to a 2014 CBC report, food waste accounted for approximately 31 billion dollars lost, with individuals wasting approximately 14.6 billion dollars’ worth of food annually, accounting for 47 percent of the food’s total cost.
According to Dr. Tammara Soma, a PhD graduate from UofT in Planning and the previous Food Equity Coordinator at New College, food waste spans beyond singular definitions and impacts.
“It’s what I would call a wicked problem. Wicked problems are basically complex problems that really touches on all of the social, environmental, economic type politics,” she says.
What happens to food waste at Vic?
The tray’s leftovers are scraped into the green compost bins, 35-gallon containers that are used for all of Burwash’s food waste.
With ten to 12 compost bins in circulation, each able to hold approximately nine standard four-inch-deep pans of food, Burwash throws out approximately three to four bins of waste each day. That totals a maximum of 140 gallons of food daily.
The food thrown out is the food that can’t be reused. This includes the food left on trays, in the pans on the serveries, or during preparation in the kitchen. “Whatever is being in service upstairs, to be honest, that should not be saved, [because it] is out there and open. It’s not safe to save,” Mr. Sharma says.
This means that aside from the food wasted on trays and scraps from kitchen prep, Burwash throws out a maximum of two pans per item served each day, as that’s the typical number of pans per dish out on the serveries.
“Sometimes we are very close to running out [of the dish],” he says, “so there is nothing.”
At Ned’s Café, another arm of Vic Food Services, the same process with compost bins happens, according to Mr. Sharma. However, as it’s a café where students are not required to dine in and leave their trays, there is a greater chance of unaccounted leftovers being found in a landfill. The plastic containers that Ned’s sometimes serves food in are yet another source of waste.
“With students buying in packages, it’s a little bit too much,” Dr. Soma says. “It’s beyond what they can eat, and then what ends up happening is there’s that double burden: there’s food waste that’s happening, and there’s packaging waste happening as well. So portion-sizing is also something that can be addressed.”
There are also biodegradable plastic utensils available for people on the go—but that doesn’t prevent students from using them when dining in. In addition, students can clear their trays and trash into different bins to separate their waste. This is practice is similar to the one used by Vic Food Services, where people have to separate their own food waste into categories like garbage, recycling, papers, and organic.
However, that often means contamination occurs. People can haphazardly toss their coffee cups into organic bins or their banana peels in the recycling, making some green initiatives a moot point.
According to Greg Seljak, the co-president of UofT’s Environmental Student Union, contamination has become an issue on campus.
“It’s not a big secret that the garbage/paper recycling/container recycling/compost bags in the SMC meal hall (Canada Room) all go into the garbage,” he writes in an email. “It’s usually the students who fail to sort their own waste, and the mixed waste must go in the garbage for safety purposes. I would expect that this is the same practice at all of the meal halls on campus.”
What does Vic do to combat food waste?
Beyond just compost, the food on trays in Burwash is also often a reincarnation of past dishes.
According to Mr. Sharma, food re-management is instrumental to Vic Food Services’ sustainability philosophy.
“Say you are left with two or three pans at the end of the night,” he says. “We would rapid-cool it down, and we will save it in the fridge, mark the date, and maybe then again give it a new twist … or add some vegetables, or add a different kind of sauce—serve it like an Asian style —and you can use it.”
In addition to this, log books are also kept. Each page is divided into three sections: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Each chart underneath the sections has spaces for the menu item, the ingredients, quantity made, yield, amount left over, and any additional remarks.
Mr. Sharma keeps these to track trends with certain dishes and time periods. This affects how Burwash adjusts its portions to the demands of students.
For example, during an average week, 50 to 60 lbs of pasta is cooked per day. When Mr. Sharma checked the recorded trend for Reading Week in November 2017, he saw that Burwash had only 60 percent of its regular weekly attendance. Consequently, he dropped the average portions of food cooked from 100 percent to 60 percent this Reading Week. Instead, only 30 to 40 lbs of pasta was cooked.
“We want to minimize food waste,” he says. “We want to maximize the experience.”
How can we improve?
Just because food is composted does not mean that disposing of it is an innocent action. Although it’s one of the greener methods of disposal, it requires energy, resources, and money.
“A green bin is no excuse to say, ‘Oh well, I’m putting this whole sandwich in the green bin, so I guess I’m doing something better,’” Dr. Soma says. “Prevention is always the key.”
Since the food thrown out nominally comes from prep, leftovers, and pans out on the serveries, reducing the amount untouched means that the best solution for prevention is simple: eat.
This is easier said than done. To engage students in dining hall food that many don’t enjoy, and to engage students in discourse about sustainability, means that students need to take smaller portions and actually enjoy the food.
For students to take smaller portions, there needs to more awareness and education about the necessity of doing so. Three posters hanging over the conveyor belt is too late of a notice; there need to be posters near the serveries for more immediate reminders to students. More events should be hosted by the university to discuss food waste, or incentives can be created to discourage throwing out large quantities of food.
Next, for students to actually enjoy the food and eat it, there needs to be better communication between Vic Food Services and students. Though there’s a suggestion box for complaints or requests, according to Mr. Sharma, out of the 400 guests for lunch and the 500 guests for dinner at Burwash, a maximum of ten suggestions can be found in the box per day. At Ned’s Café, only a maximum of five are submitted.
To combat this, more suggestion boxes should be set up at each table, so students can voice their reactions to the food more immediately. This streamlines communication and allows Burwash to adjust to foods that guests like more and will eat.
For students, reducing waste is purely beneficial. Our thousands of dollars in meal plan money fund the food served to us.
“When you are cutting down your waste,” Mr. Sharma says, “you’re definitely saving.”
*VUSAC’s Sustainability Commission could not be immediately reached for comment.*
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