The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Aaron Brown Students dispose of waste in Cafe Mac Wednesday.

Students lined up patiently by the conveyer belt window, waiting to scrape their plates and hand over their dishes. No, it was not one of those days when the tray conveyer is broken or horribly backed up. On Wednesday and Thursday, a group of students, led by Macalester College Student Government and an Environmental Studies class, gave Macalester a wake up call about the amount of waste they produce at each meal.

The waste awareness campaign, launched by the MCSG Presidential Commission in coordination with the "Conservation Psychology" class, is intended to make students and staff realize how much food they waste. The two groups teamed up when each realized that the other was working on the same project.

Tables staffed by student volunteers drawn from the class and MCSG were set up in front of the conveyer belt that usually whisk trays - along with the several hundred pounds of food wasted each day - to the kitchen to be washed. Guided by the volunteers, Café Mac diners scraped their leftovers into the bins and buckets at the table and then gave the volunteers their dishes. Whole pieces of food that would otherwise be tossed out were put on display, while individuals who left their plates spotless were greeted with cheers and rings of a cowbell.

Terence Steinberg '11, a freshman MCSG representative and one of the lead organizers, said that 900 people went through Café Mac for lunch on Wednesday, and that the process had gone relatively smoothly.

"I don't think people were waiting in queue for more than like 15 seconds," he said. "For a first try, it went pretty smoothly. We tried to make people aware that this was happening before today."

Steinberg said that there were 160.5 pounds of waste from Wednesday's lunch, including the weight of the buckets, which Café Mac Board Manager Theresa Cianni said was less than usual.

"I think people were very conscious because they know it's going on," Cianni said.

Laina Copley '10, an organizer from Conservation Psychology, was a little taken aback by the amount of the amount of waste that was still generated. She said that on average, there are 200 pounds of waste generated, which made Wednesday's performance somewhat odd.

Continued...

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