FEB 6, 2025 | NEWS | By Beau Toepfer
Rastall Cafe patrons have generally been throwing away more food waste every month, peaking in December at almost 3 ounces per person, about the weight of one onion, since the beginning of the school year.
Bon Appetit, the company that runs the campus food service, has been running a Weigh the Waste program since November 2023.
The audit aims to help patrons waste less food and understand how to divert their food waste correctly.
Bon Appetit is running this program nationwide and has been participating in other sustainability efforts, including purchasing “imperfectly delicious produce” and donating food that was prepared but not served.
According to Kristin Ridgway, Regional Operations Support for Bon Appetit, the service has partnered with on-campus sustainability classes and advocacy groups. One group is the Office of Sustainability Waste Interns.
Bon Appetit allowed patrons to provide feedback in a survey about why they threw food away.
According to Ridgway in an email, patrons were able to choose options including: “‘I took/was served too much,’ ‘I didn’t have enough time,’ “I didn’t like the way the food tasted,’ and ‘the food was too oily/spicy.’”
The Waste Interns have another idea on why waste has increased or been improperly sorted, not only in Rastall’s Weigh the Waste program but also in waste bins across campus.
“It’s really hard to know what’s recyclable and what’s landfill, and even compostable packaging can be hard if it’s not properly labeled,” said Chase Hetler ‘25, a Waste Intern. “I do think there is an element of laziness, even if people don’t want to admit it. I think it’s really hard to get people to really care.”
According to Hetler and Martina Hasler Arantes ‘25, another Waste Intern, one focus group of students and Bon Appetit spotlighted how students felt shamed by the Weigh the Waste program, and they often weren’t eating the food because they had issues with how it was prepared.
Bon Appetit provided a station for students to provide feedback, but according to Hetler, the Bon Appetit representative said nobody provided input.
“We also want students to understand that we all accidentally waste food sometimes,” Ridgway said in an email. “There’s never any pressure from our team, just suggestions for those who want to plan ahead to reduce food waste.”
Ridgway urges patrons to check menus before entering the restaurant and check all the options before deciding what to eat. She also recommends that students start with small portions; if they want more, they can return for another serving.
“How can we just create more open conversation instead of placing blame onto people?” Hetler asked.
The Waste Interns hope to open the dialog to try and make concrete changes instead of continuing discourse in which people are walking away angry.
For Hasler Arantes, it’s about how to facilitate a compromise, or, as she put it, “trying to figure something out between the two, instead of just being like, ‘the blame is on them, and the blame is on them.”