It isn’t a myth that college students are broke and hungry. So why do college campuses throw out millions of pounds of uneaten food every year?
According to the Food Recovery Network, college campus cafeterias are some of the biggest food waste culprits in America. Food waste is defined as food that is safe and healthy for people to consume, yet gets thrown away. This isn’t referring to food that people get full of and don’t finish, but instead the tons of food that don’t even make it to the plate. Approximately 22 million pounds of food get thrown out by college campuses across America annually. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency stated that 40% of food made for consumption never actually gets eaten – yet one in six Americans goes hungry.
The case is no different at OU. According to the OU Food Pantry, about one in every three students has faced food insecurity while at college. The Food Pantry aims to lower this statistic, but it can be difficult when the university cafeterias are contributing so heavily to the food waste problem.
Student cafeterias are required to make enough food to be able to serve all their potential customers. These cafeterias don’t want to risk a shortage of anything, so they tend to make more food than they expect to serve. Naturally, this leads to a surplus of food at the end of the day that is left to be thrown away.
“The first time they told me to throw everything away after dinner, I was like, are you joking?” said Dunham Cafeteria worker Zoe Gardner when asked about food waste at her job. “It was so much [food]. Everything is just discarded at the end of a shift.”
Donating this leftover food to the Food Pantry would solve a multitude of problems. The Pantry’s website states that they are not funded through the university, and instead rely solely on donations. Partnering with the university-ran cafeterias would provide the Food Pantry with more goods, as well as help to eliminate food waste on OU’s campus.
People are utilizing the Pantry now more than ever. According to OU Food Pantry team member Bailey Koewing, the organization’s reach is growing every week.
“Last year we would serve around 150 households on a busier week,” Koewing said. “Two weeks ago we surpassed 500.”
Koewing stated that the Pantry has broken a new record nearly every week – the number of households served has consistently more than the week prior.
When asked about possibly partnering with OU’s cafeterias, Koewing was supportive of the idea.
“Since we have this food pantry and we have a facility in place to utilize that food, we definitely – if we haven’t already – need to find ways to get that food to the pantry because we have so many people who would use it,” Koewing said. “If we had new options from the dining halls I think that would be really beneficial.”
The Food Pantry lists ways to support on its website and OU Food Services can be contacted about food waste here.
