Food waste is one of the most prolific problems contributing to climate change. According to Project Drawdown, a third of the world’s food is not eaten, rendering the resources and greenhouse gases emitted by the production of that food unnecessary. Reducing food waste in your home and in the way you eat out in the world is one of the best things you can do to reduce your individual carbon footprint. We have a guide for ways to reduce your food waste while living on a college campus and in your residential spaces that when adopted will not only help save the planet, but save you money and heartache over lost produce in the process.

For Living on a Campus

At Austin College, all freshmen are required to purchase a meal plan, and most students stay on some version of a meal plan for at least three years. The nature of buffet style dining halls lends itself to overeating and wasted food produced on a daily basis. With a few small changes to your dining hall eating patterns, you can greatly reduce the amount that you throw away, and you can serve as an example to your peers around you.

Taste before you choose an entrée

If possible, try to sample a meal before you actually get it. Want to try the new recipe at the international station? Don’t get a full plate until you have asked for a sample. If you end up getting a plate of a meal you don’t like, that meal becomes waste that could have been eaten by someone else and is now heading towards the landfill unnecessarily.

Get one entrée at a time

As active and busy young people, it is natural that you may need more than one entrée to fill you up. Whether you are a student athlete or just trying to fuel your long study nights, we often look to the buffet and identify multiple meals we want to eat at once.

Reduce your food waste by only trying to get one entrée at a time. You may want a pizza and a burger in one meal, but start with the one you want most and wait until you finish it before you grab the next one. Chances are, you may find that in fact one entrée was enough, or that you don’t need as much of the next entrée as you thought.

Take 25-50% less food than you think you need

Often, our eyes are much bigger than our stomachs. A good rule of thumb to follow, especially in all-you-can-eat buffet style dining halls, is to take about 25% or even 50% less food than you think you need. Imagine the portion you want to get and take a quarter off of that. There is always an opportunity to get more, but that 25% may be the difference between having a clean plate and having food leftover that has to be thrown away.

Don’t use a tray in the cafeteria

Although tray style dining can make it much easier to carry your food back to your seat, it often creates a subtle incentive to carry more food than you actually need to eat. Our brains, especially after a particularly exciting lecture, tend to fill the tray with any and all food that looks good, regardless of how hungry we actually are. By foregoing the tray when getting your food, you limit yourself to only those items which you can cry with two hands, which almost guarantees that you will eat less. If what you could originally carry isn’t enough, you can always go back for more. However, most students will find that what they could originally carry is enough, and what they go back for is still less food overall than if they loaded up their tray with everything their eyes were hungry for.