One Plate, Two Plate, Full Plate, Clean Plate

It’s official: I use too many plates. Too many plates=too much food=not enough eaten=too much thrown away. In some ways I think it is my fault and in others I don’t think it is something that I can help. In the dining halls, there are so many options and when I go looking around to get food I have to use another plate. One day last week I had gotten pasta because it was the first thing that I saw and then I got up to get something else, of course using another plate. Then when I had gotten back to the table, I forgot about the plate of pasta that I already had!

Even with the push of sustainability in the dining hall, especially with the new food service, one thing that hasn’t changed is having to use a new plate when getting new food. I am not saying that this is a bad thing because I understand that it is for health reasons so we don’t transfer germs. However, it does have its unsustainable qualities.

When I think of one plate I think of limiting the amount of food that I place on my plate, therefore reducing the amount of food that I don’t eat and that gets wasted. As an added bonus I think it would cut down on the water usage needed to wash all of the plates. (Of course not having to wash one extra plate during lunch isn’t going to make a significant environmental impact, but it’s the thought that counts!)

40% of food in the United States gets uneaten! (Gunders, 2012). That is absolutely ridiculous! That equates to about 20 pounds of food wasted per month, per person! (Gunders, 2012) How did it get to this point? Regarding my sustainable behavior, I know that it will be hard to exactly quantify my food waste because I do not have a scale to carry around with me; this is why I am using the one plate idea since I think it will be the easiest way to visually see what I am eating and what I am not. I am hoping that I can do it. One of the barriers is definitely the rules of the dining halls. However, after reading this article about how much food is wasted and observing my eating habits I am ready to start my one plate challenge!

P.S (Sorry the photo is a little blurry, but it had such a good representation of food waste. The white is the percentage LOST and the black is the percentage CONSUMED.)

Gunders, D. (2012).  Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill, 1-26. http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf