Last week, students from the Sustainability Club collected and measured food waste on campus during lunch as part of Earth Month. With assistance from Food Services and a few faculty/staff volunteers, the students were stationed in the cafeteria Tuesday through Thursday from 11:30-1:00 and outside the Cardinal Club on Thursday. Over the three days, a total of 208 pounds of waste was collected: 75 pounds from the cafeteria on Tuesday, 64 pounds on Wednesday, 53.5 pounds on Thursday, and 16 pounds from the Cardinal Club on Thursday. On the first day, waste averaged out to 0.25 pounds per person, but dropped to an average of 0.2 pounds per person on the second and third days!
Why does food waste matter for our environment? In the U.S., over 130 billion pounds of food gets wasted each year. When this food gets thrown away, it’s a waste of all the water, land, and fertilizer that went into growing it – that’s 21% of all agricultural water use, 19% of all U.S. croplands, and 18% of farming fertilizer. When food waste breaks down in a landfill, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. The emissions from landfilled food waste accounts for 2.6% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of 37 million passenger vehicles! Composting food waste instead of landfilling it can reduce these emissions by 50%.
