Campus Eateries Get Greener

Students eating in the dining commons may come closer to finishing their plates this year, as well as come to appreciate the fact they have food to eat, campus administrators say.

In the name of waste reduction, all dining commons visitors will now watch themselves dump their food waste into an enormous pile produced by all visitors.

"Now the students will see the massive amounts of food they're wasting, but also see that it can be used," says Kim LaPean, marketing coordinator for Residential & Student Service Programs.

It all comes as part of UC Berkeley's project to make its dining halls "greener," resulting in environmentally-friendly changes ranging from biodegradable packaging to rooms of enormous windows that reduce temperature costs.

Crossroads, the dining hall for units 1 and 2, is the only campus building certified green.

The hall, largest of the four student dining commons, was recently honored as a Bay Area Green Business by Alameda County officials. Its low-flow rinsing nozzles, efficient lighting and giant window walls will hopefully reflect a standard for other buildings to emulate.

But the burden of maintaining that status lies on students.

Starting in a few weeks, during September's recycling week, the food waste project will begin.

Berkeley Worms, a student-run composting group, will compost all food waste. The group, founded a decade ago, already composts about 70 tons of food-which does not yet include student waste-from campus dining halls each year.

Lisa Bauer, manager of Campus Recycling and Refuse Services, says she hopes the program will not only reduce waste, but also encourage students to think about the waste they generate.

"Now you have to look at the food you didn't eat and scrape it into a box where you see all of the food everyone else didn't eat," she says. "Perhaps this will change people's thought process about choosing food and not eating it."

Although food touched by students' plates will benefit the composting program, a good portion of the food left untouched will be distributed to people in need.

Last week's opening convocation left 200 unopened lunch boxes, which went to Harrison House, a Berkeley shelter.

Unit 3 and Foothill dining commons will now join Crossroads in delivering all preconsumer food waste-food that has not touched students' plates-to the shelter.

"I'm thrilled," LaPean says. "It's our duty to the community to find a way to make use of this food we're not serving. It's not always practical to make another dish."

The sheer quantity of waste has prevented the campus from implementing such programs in the past.

Berkeley generated so much extra food that no one could coordinate how to accept and regularly transport the volume of food produced each day.

Even now, other shelters will have to be contacted, LaPean says.

The program is a collaborative effort.

"It's not something one person can do," LaPean says. "Success will come when we get some students and the city of Berkeley to care about it. Then we can make more of an impact."

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