CDS teams up with students for waste reduction

Efforts to inform students include working with MSA and Sustain Mizzou.

By Krissy Tripp

Published April 30, 2009

Campus Dining Services continues to work with campus organizations to inform students about waste reduction.

After working with the Residence Halls Association, who supported trayless dining as a means of reducing waste, CDS began working with the Missouri Students Association.

"It seems they had good intent, but didn't have much effort in it," Student Affairs Committee Chairman Paul Whiteside said about CDS.

Whiteside said MSA wants to make the educational campaign more effective.

RHA President Robert Wood said CDS wanted to do an educational campaign so students could understand the pros and cons of sustainability.

CDS spokesman Andrew Lough said CDS is willing to educate students about trayless and sustainability issues but they will only work with students on initiatives. They don't plan on mandating anything.

"As student groups get involved, we can provide them with information, but we don't want to take a side," Lough said.

MSA President Jordan Paul said in the past six months, neither he nor his counterparts have seen any sort of trayless information in the dining halls.

"As far as I know, an educational campaign was never done to an adequate extent," Paul said.

CDS Associate Director Steve Simpson said if student groups want to educate students about trayless dining, it's their responsibility. He said he feels telling students how much food they're wasting falls on CDS.

"Frankly it's not on our agenda," Simpson said. "What's on our agenda is controlling food waste."

RHA Speaker of Congress Blake Lawrence said CDS's interest in trayless dwindled after a survey showed students aren't in support of trayless dining.

Lough confirmed CDS stopped their aggressive trayless campaign because of the ballot.

"Initially we were under the impression from RHA and MSA that students were overwhelmingly supportive of going trayless, but that's not the case," Lough said.

Simpson said CDS isn't taking a side on trayless, but they're in support of waste reduction.

"I won't make the commitment to educate students on why CDS should go trayless. That's a process that may or may not be one method of controlling food waste. Trays are not the problem; food waste is the problem," Simpson said. "We committed to educate students about food waste."

Whiteside said he thinks both parties should share the responsibility of educating students about waste reduction and trayless issues. MSA is working to improve the overall efforts of the sustainability campaign.

They brought up adding more waste posters or posting them where students pick up their trays rather than where they drop them off.

"We're slowly making traction with our efforts to get students involved," Lough said.

In addition to working with RHA and MSA, CDS began to speak with Sustain Mizzou.

"We just recently worked with a member of Sustain Mizzou to get a brochure finished," Lough said.

The brochure explains what students can do to impact waste such as pick items with less packaging.

Besides explaining what students can do to improve sustainability, CDS is looking to improve internal sustainability efforts.

Lough said they're trying to cook more on an as-needed basis instead of wasting food based on anticipation and labeling food so students can make more educated decisions.

Simpson said they're working with the agricultural department to get waste oil transformed into biodiesel fuels and landscape services to use pulp for mulch.