Food Wasters! Where Are They?

This topic submitted by Drew Butcher, Sydney Willcox, Kyle Tierney, Michael Grepp ( butcheda@muohio.edu ) on 10/12/04 .

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

Drew Butcher
Sydney Willcox
Kyle Tierney
Michael Grepp
Tom Sterling, WCP 121
Food Wasters! Where Are They?

1. Introduction.
The purpose of our experiment is to determine whether the students eating regularly in the Alexander Dining Hall are more conscious about controlling the amounts of food wasted per meal than students who eat regularly in a main campus dining hall. We are curious about this issue because it is common belief that Western campus students are more aware and concerned about the environment, especially since environmental studies and environmental science majors live on the Western campus. This is pertinent to the huge problem of wastefulness in America during a time when so many areas of the world are impoverished.
Hypothesis: We will, through the process of a repeated visual survey of wasted food that gets thrown away, find that Western students (on average) waste significantly less food than main campus students (Erickson Dining Hall).
Research Question: Will the idea that Western students are more environmentally aware be demonstrated through the results of our research project?
Prediction: Because Western students eat at Alexander Dining Hall regularly, the amount of waste we measure there will be less than the amount we find at Erickson, demonstrating more overall awareness of waste problems.
We are interested in this research because personally, as Western campus residents, we want to know if we are among a more environmentally-conscious group of people who are doing more to help the battle against waste than the typical main campus Miami students (which would be comforting).

2. Relevance of your research question: Background Information.
"Each year, Americans discard more than 96 billion pounds of good food. If 5% was recovered, it could write the equivalent of a day's food for 4 million hungry people." (Hunter 1998)
Wow. What a waste. It would be nice if we found that it is indeed true that our fellow Western students are more careful about their food consumption and waste-prevention habits than those described in the above quote! We can be sure that food wasting habits have gotten out of hand in America when we look at such statistics as the following:
The average college student produces 640 pounds of solid waste each year, (an example being the University of Waterloo, which wastes an estimated 5.9 tons of food weekly).
Food waste is the third largest component of generated waste and the second largest component of discarded waste.
A helpful suggestion for food scrap management, (which is probably safe to assume to be unknown by most college students) is to prevent food waste, feed people, convert to animal feed (rendering), and compost. This would be helpful information for citizens from all states. To give an example, Californians alone throw away over 5 million tons of food scraps in a year. It's definitely a major issue of concern, considering the fact that about half of the landfills where this waste Ôresides' are in need of repair.

Works Cited: Library Resources
Kevin Drake, Sheryl Bunn & Dan Blue. Airport Launches Food Waste Diversion Program. Biocycle; March 2004. Volume 45.
We chose this source because it gives an example of a specific way in which an organization is doing what they can to help the problem.

Friedman, Andrew. Recycling Redux. Planning; November 2003. Volume 69 Issue 10.

Fairchild, J.K. Finding Highest Uses for Urban Food Waste. Biocycle; March 2003. Volume 44 Issue 3.

Please Sir, Can We All Waste a Bit Less? Look Japan; February 2003 Volume 48 Issue 563.

M.L. Westendorf & Z.C. Dong. Recycled Cafeteria Food Waste as a Feed for Swine: Nutrient Content, Digestibility, Growth, and... Journal of Animal Science; December 1998. Volume 76 Issue 12.

Hunter, Beatrice Trum. Minimizing Food Waste. Consumers' Research Magazine; April 1998. Volume 81 Issue 4.
We got our powerful opening quote in the background information from this source.

Rathje, William. Why We Throw Food Away. Atlantic Monthly; April 1986. Volume 257 Issue 4.

Platzman, Andrea D. Combat Food Waste and Fight Hunger in Your Backyard. Environmental Nutrition; 1997. Volume 20 Issue 11.

Leroux, Kivi. Lettuce Recycle: Putting Food Waste to Work. American City & Council; 1999. Volume 114 Issue 12.

Passel, Peter. Cutting Waste Can Be a Waste. New York Times; 9/21/97. Volume 147 Issue 50922, Section 4.

Borghese, Anita. Food Waste is Energy Waste. Environment; July/August 1981. Volume 23 Issue 6.

Sample, Ian. Food Scraps Make Perfect Plastic. New Scientist; 11/23/2002. Volume 176 Issue 2370.

Works Cited: Internet Sources
http://www.green-networld.com/facts/waste.htm
We chose this source for the good statistical information.

http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infowast/watgreen/projects/library/s01composting/composting.html
This source gives statistics from the University of Waterloo.

http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/FoodWaste/
This one gives suggestions for food scrap management.

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25343

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/wastenot.htm

3. Specific Research Design.
The actual process of information-gathering we will be using is a visual survey of trays in the dining halls as students are dropping them off after they are finished eating. We intend to create a point-based grading system and we will give a Ôgrade' to each tray that goes out after dinner, the busiest meal of the day (according to the manager at Alexander).
We will set up a table right beside the area where students drop off their trays and ask them if we can look their trays over quickly before they put them in. We will conduct this survey for the full 2-hour time span of the dinner meal, doing it 3 times a week, every week, during the month of November. We will gather data from both Alexander and Erickson Dining Halls and compare the data at the end to see if there is a significant difference in the amount of excess food that is thrown away. Drinks and waste paper will be taken into account.
We will work together in giving points to different trays to make sure that the values for the different amounts of waste are consistent and the end results are accurate. We have already been in contact with the managers at these dining halls so it should go smoothly as long as we give them the requested four days notice that we will be coming in. The choice of Alexander Dining Hall is obviously due to the fact that its location is centered right in the middle of Western campus. Erickson is located in the east quad and we chose it because it is similar in size and far enough away from Western that the Western students aren't likely to eat there regularly. We will also take into account any factors that could interfere with a useful data comparison. For example, we will be measuring the amount of food wasted as proportional to the amount of people who attend dinner in case a much larger number of students come to either Alexander or Erickson.

4. Materials and Methods.
Our research idea doesn't require too much in the way of materials. We will need to find a table we can use regularly and take to the dining halls with us. We will also need chairs, obviously. We will use graph paper to make charts of the data as we collect it together as a group. We will all look at the trays as they are going out and make a group decision on the Ôseverity' of the waste that is going on. This will be measured by mere amount of food left on the plates, drinks left in the cups, ice cream left in the bowls, etc.
After November is over and all of our data has been attained, we will find out which dining hall houses more waste per person, assuming that if Western produces lower numbers, the students are in fact more environmentally aware and cautious of waste.
Possible ways of incorporating the class on presentation day include handing out question sheets before we begin. Examples of questions could include: Do you think Western students waste more or less than main campus students, or vice versa, or is there no significant difference? How much food do you think the students here at Miami waste during one 2-hour dinner? How much food do you think you waste? These are examples of questions that could lead to their surprise upon our revealing of the data we've acquired by then (if the numbers are high, which of course is not a good thing).
We can also offer some kind of handout that suggests helpful ways to cut back on waste of food and other things as well. We will let them know how the results affect them because they are indicative of the habits of the people with whom they are sharing their everyday space.

Research Timeline:
Tuesday, September 28-finalization of research idea
Thursday, October 7-contacted managers of dining halls (Alex and Erickson)
Monday, October 11-posting of proposals
Month of November-we will visit a dining hall 3 times weekly and at the end of November we will analyze and draw conclusions from the data

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