UConn students need a hand, or six: Officials at the University of Connecticut at Storrs are going to do away with food trays to try to get students to take less food, and thereby reduce food waste, reports The Day.
The strategy has been applied at other colleges, with the notion that students might take less food if they aren’t given the means to make a big haul from the kitchen to the dining area. “It’s easy to pile up a bunch of food on a tray just because you have a tray,” Daniel Britton, the university’s sustainability coordinator, told Jenna Cho, a reporter for the local newspaper. “You sit down, and you can’t actually eat all the food you’ve taken.” Mr. Britton noted that the experiment could also have benefits in water conservation — presumably because there would be fewer items to wash, although the article doesn’t say that specifically.
The experiment will start with an audit of the amount of food wasted in one dining hall, then feature an educational campaign on food waste before the trays go away.
An editorial in The Daily Campus, the student newspaper, did not support the project, saying that it would be inconvenient. “Think about it; the majority of people only have two hands,” it said. “Without a tray, everyone would need hands for their drinks, soup, salad, dessert, the plate plus another hand to serve. Add those up and without trays everyone would need six hands. There is probably not even one person among the students, faculty, and staff of this university who has six hands.”
Sustainability at student stores: Also at UConn, The Daily Campus is urging the student co-op to give up plastic bags in favor of canvas ones. An editorial in the paper favorably noted the steep tax on plastic bags in Ireland, which made people shift to cloth bags. “In America, there is more talk about ‘going green’ than actual participation,” the editorial said. “Most people won’t do anything about the environment until there is either a global crisis or they are forced to by the government.” Or by the university, taking away precious food trays.
Meanwhile, at Wesleyan University, the Weshop, a student store, will no longer carry Kimberly Clark paper items, like Kleenex. Students say the company is cutting old-growth forests to produce its products. The Argus notes that the boycott, which is part of a Greenpeace campaign, has taken hold on other campuses, including American University, Rice University, Skidmore College, and the University of Miami. “Our next target is the Kimberly Clark products that are still used in dorms and public buildings all over campus,” said one of the students who organized the boycott.
The perils of ‘videophilia’: This commentary, from The Sentinel of Carlisle, Pa., is included here just for edification. Rich Lewis notes that although sustainability is a hot topic, especially on college campuses, young people are disconnected from the outdoors. Mr. Lewis cites a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois and Patricia Zaradic of Bryn Mawr College. It says that there is a “fundamental and pervasive decline in nature recreation” (like fishing, hiking, and camping) and that “declining nature participation has crucial implications for current conservation efforts.” Mr. Lewis blames the trend on “videophilia” — watching TV, or writing and reading this blog. (Go outside, now!)
Mr. Lewis, Mr. Pergams, and Ms. Zaradic aren’t the first to note this trend. In Orion magazine, Richard Louv wrote about the “nature-deficit disorder” among children, and the “leave-no-child-inside movement.” Also in Orion, Lowell Monke has said that an over-reliance on Internet lessons and virtual teaching tools has come at the expense of real-world encounters with nature. —Scott Carlson
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