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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/trayless-dining-university-food-waste-solution/>
"Walk into any dining hall at Cornell University and you’ll quickly spot the
usual nods to ecological responsibility, like reusable containers and posters
about composting. But this campus’s most popular sustainability measure might
be the one that you can’t see. Scan the tables and you’ll notice that one
hallmark of cafeteria life, the plastic tray, is nowhere to be found.
Trayless dining is a simple proposal: remove trays from cafeterias, and people
won’t take as much food as they might have otherwise, resulting in less food
waste. Additional benefits include cutting plastics consumption and reducing
energy use since trays aren’t being run through a dishwasher. At a time when
concerns over food shortages, access to fertilizer, climate change and plastics
pollution are at an unparalleled high, this low-tech solution has the ability
to pack a serious punch.
As well as the environmental plusses, going tray-free at Cornell has proven
highly successful if for no other reason than students don’t seem to mind that
something once synonymous with campus dining is now absent.
“I’ve never heard a single request for trays,” says Anna Ben-Shlomo,
sustainability coordinator for Cornell University Dining. “The world has moved
so past tray dining.”
The idea of trayless dining took off at college campuses in the U.S. a little
over a decade ago. By 2009, 42 percent of colleges and universities tracked by
the Sustainable Endowments Institute had begun curbing the use of trays in
their dining halls. Just three years later, 75 percent of the tracked schools
had eliminated trays in some or all of their dining facilities."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
