Editors Note: A relevant article taken from the archives
Have you ever played the alphabet game with the food in your waste can?
Neither had I until I spent an afternoon in the C-side/Eddies dish room,
scraping the wasted food from the students’ plates into the garbage.
While reminiscent of my summer job, this experience was indeed unique. I
was participating in the Food Waste Survey taken by our campus chapter
of Bread for the World (BFW).
Thankful for an apron and rubber gloves, I gradually eased unto my task.
As Sodexho employees wheeled the familiar carts full of cluttered trays
into the room, fellow BFW members and I went to work collecting all the
edible leftover food in trashcans.
Then our efforts went toward helping to ready the dishes for the
commercial dishwasher that meant sending all the paper and liquid
remains down a pressurized stream of water where it was churned into a
shredded mass of conserved volume.
Amidst the moist air scented by dirty dishes and food scraps, the
purpose of the project came alive for me. In the end, in approximately 3
hours, we collected 229 pounds of food waste. This number standing
alone does not provide enough perspective, but in clearing off the
plates it became much more for me. The full platters of food that slid
into the garbage represented our luxury to take food lightly.
In fact, taking issue with food waste represents how fortunate we are
with our overabundance of food. However, the reality of hunger somberly
counters our excess both in this community and around the world.
In dealing with this harsh reality I am glad to identify with Bread for
the World, an organization that strives to end hunger through awareness,
education and lobbying. More personally though, I seek to view food more
as a gift and less as a certainty in the hopes of reducing my own
careless waste of a precious commodity. I invite you to join me in my
endeavor.
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