Food Waste at Smith College

Ava Carroll’s piece offers a comprehensive analysis of the food waste crisis at colleges around the country and here at Smith. Carroll’s meticulous research highlights the true magnitude of this often-overlooked problem while offering nuanced solutions. Her work explores the far-reaching impacts of food waste, from economic losses to environmental degradation, while emphasizing the role Smith plays both in contributing to and addressing this crisis. With practical insights into dining hall inefficiencies and an overview of past community-driven initiatives, Carroll provides a roadmap for tackling food waste at Smith and beyond. –Laura Fay ‘25

Food Waste at Smith College

Ava Carroll ’27

Introduction: 

Food is a cornerstone of daily life. Grocery shopping, cooking, and sharing a meal with family and friends are things that most people do regularly. Yet all of these actions come with one often overlooked consequence: food waste. The Food and Agricultural Organization defines food waste as “food appropriate for human consumption being discarded, whether after it is left to spoil or kept beyond its expiry date” (Ishangulyyev). From throwing away that half loaf of bread that got moldy before it could be finished, to tossing the slimy bunch of cilantro that was bought but never used, about 30-40% of the food supply in the US is wasted. Food waste doesn’t just happen at the consumer level, either: it happens at all stages of production—in the fields, during shipping, in processing plants and at the grocery store (Food Waste Faqs). 

This is a problem that affects society in many ways. First, there is the economic impact on the consumer. It is estimated that the average American family spends about $1400 per year on food that will never be eaten. Food waste also wastes resources–water, fertilizers and fossil fuels–used in producing food that is never consumed. There are environmental harms from excessive food production like soil degradation and ecosystem disruption, and there is also the environmental impact of food decomposing in landfills and emitting methane, which is a 30 times more powerful factor in climate change than carbon dioxide (Ishangulyyev; Annual Reports). 

Examining the problem of food waste here at Smith will allow us to identify problem areas and propose solutions. With enough awareness of this issue, the Smith community can come together to make changes that reduce the environmental and monetary burden of food waste. 

College Food Waste:

Some of the most shocking sources of food waste are college dining halls. It is estimated that individually, each college student wastes 142 pounds of food per year. Combined with food waste from dining hall kitchens, this leads to colleges and universities throwing away around 22 million pounds of food annually (Poon). Waste is generated at all stages of the process, from chefs throwing away edible bits of food, to overproduction, to students leaving food on their plates.

All colleges struggle to varying degrees to estimate the traffic at their dining hall(s). Since chefs don’t want to run out of food, they often make a surplus. This leaves dining services with the problem of too much leftover food. Some foods, like roasted veggies or grilled meats and tofu, can be cooled and put in a salad bar, but other dishes, like hot sandwiches and soup, cannot be repurposed in the same way. Some college students have noticed this problem and tried to solve it by founding small-scale food rescue efforts like SPOON, at Stanford University, and the Food Recovery Network at the University of Maryland. These groups aim to recover and repackage leftover food, which they deliver to local groups that use it to feed the hungry (Poon). 

Programs like these have achieved a lot. Since 2012, the Food Recovery Network has grown from the University of Maryland to encompass more than 200 chapters throughout the United States. As of June 2023, they have recovered 14 million pounds of food (Annual Reports). This is an impressive amount, and this number doesn’t even reflect the impact that smaller, school-specific food rescue programs have also made. 

Although the Smith community has shown a willingness to help solve this food waste issue, first we need to recognize that we are part of the problem. For one, dining hall food is so variable that even a familiar and often well-liked dish can change drastically each time it is made. A student might typically like a certain dish, but because of the inconsistency of some dining halls, there is the likelihood that the student won’t like how the dish is made each time. This can lead to an unsatisfactory dining experience that ends in the meal being thrown away. Additionally, the prevalence of all-you-can-eat style dining on college campuses affects the overall food waste. Bon Appetit Management Co. (BAMCo), a company that provides catering services to corporations, colleges, and universities noted in their study on food waste that “Edible food waste in all-you-care-to-eat locations was nearly 40% higher than in retail settings” (Bon Appétit Management). The abundance of food in all-you-can-eat dining halls creates an environment where people can easily over-serve themselves. There are certainly other factors that contribute to wasting food, but the variable taste and ability to over-serve are two particularly notable causes. 

Food Waste at Smith: 

The design of Smith’s dining model is contributing to this issue. According to a 2019 article on Smith’s website, Smith students waste an average of 238 pounds of food per student per year, while the average amount of waste from a sample group of nearby schools (Smith, UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Wesleyan and Tufts) comes to 144 pounds per student per year (Dining in Community). This strikingly high amount of waste at Smith can partially be attributed to our decentralized dining model. Currently, Smith Dining spans across 10 dining halls and 2 cafes (Cox). Since it is difficult to estimate the amount of traffic that a single dining hall will experience, this decentralized dining style exacerbates the problem of not knowing how much food to produce at a given dining location, which we have already established is an issue that most colleges experience. Smith dining staff cannot always accurately predict the traffic at one dining hall and can be faced with meals where the food runs out or times when the traffic is lower than expected and there are too many leftovers. The meal swipe system is also not enforced, leading to a lack of data that would help dining workers have a better idea of which meals are the most popular and how much food to make (Azulay). If Smith’s dining locations were more consolidated, chefs would have a clear idea of how many students to prepare for, making it easier to prepare the necessary amount of food with limited surplus.

What Smith Has Done: 

Smith Dining has used multiple strategies to encourage students to waste less food. This includes using 8-inch instead of 10-inch dinner plates, making it harder to pile up a plate of more food than an average person can eat. The chefs are also conscious of the portion sizes of different items. Instead of serving meats in large 8 oz portions, limiting the control that students have over their serving, chefs cut meat into 3-4 oz pieces, giving the students the option to take more or fewer pieces depending on their preference. This approach has been combined with putting meat at the end of the hot buffet line so that students will have filled most of their plates with more sustainable plant foods. In combination, this is meant to reduce the amount of meat that needs to be bought, thus leading to less meat being wasted. Not only is Smith able to spend less on meat purchases, but there is also the environmental benefit of lowering the demand for meats, which are some of the most environmentally burdensome foods to produce (Cox). 

Dining menus have also been adjusted to make it easier for extra ingredients to be used in meals instead of being thrown away. Previously, menus would be on a four-week rotating schedule which was not optimized to reduce kitchen food waste. An ingredient might only be used in a couple of meals during that month-long cycle and the leftover ingredient would not stay fresh long enough to be used once the menu cycled back again. After collaborating with chefs, Dining Services created a better menu format that has allowed extra bits of produce and other perishable items to be easily incorporated into the following meals (Cox).

Chefs also use their discretion to reduce waste in the specific location they oversee. Chefs can get a meal removed from the menu if they notice that it is not popular among students; likewise, chefs can communicate whether a meal is very popular and make it available at more dining halls for a certain meal. Chefs also have the option to control the amount of food they make. For example, they can slightly underproduce oatmeal for breakfast and offer oatmeal packets during the end of the meal period if needed. Limiting surplus food is environmentally beneficial because less food is discarded at the end of a meal period and it’s economically beneficial because the ingredients can be saved for use in another dish. Dining Services is also conscious of food waste from weekly house teas. They generally try to make enough portions to feed 50% of the residents of the house they are serving. Finally, dining uses surveys (located in the ‘Dining Updates’ section above the daily menu) to gauge how students liked their meals and make improvements based on feedback. Responding to student feedback over time can go a long way toward decreasing the amount of food waste that students make (Cox). 

Dining Services is also conscious of reducing food-adjacent waste. Excessive packaging from single-serve items can be reduced by using more multi-serving items. For example, individual yogurt cups are not as widely available on campus as they were in the past. This product can only consistently be found at Chapin and Chase dining halls. Dining halls have also tried to move away from individually packaged jam and cream cheese. Recently there has been a noticeable push towards serving jam out of the jar and cream cheese straight from the block (Cox). This reduces the amount of packaging going into the landfill but has an unclear impact on the total food wasted by students. On one hand, this could be beneficial because students can take precisely the amount they want and, for example, they don’t have to throw away half a container of yogurt if they didn’t want the full portion. On the other hand, serving from larger containers creates an environment where students can easily over-serve themselves because they have no guidance on portions.

Dining Services has implemented very specific strategies to reduce food and food-adjacent waste, but it is hard to quantify exactly how successful they have been. 

What Students Have Done: 

Making changes here at Smith requires not only the effort of dining services but also the work of students. 

In 2013, Smith student Sybil Brown ‘14 founded a Smith chapter of the Food Recovery Network. The group did pickups a few nights a week at dining halls with surplus food. Unfortunately, the program faced issues, like a lack of consistent volunteers, which made even the once-weekly pickups unreliable. After the college’s campus closure due to the pandemic, the Food Recovery Network did not have enough continued interest to return to its mission (Azulay). In place of the Food Recovery Network, Smith Food Rescue Network (FRN) was founded in 2021. This organization rescues leftover dinner from dining halls seven nights a week and delivers it to Manna Community Kitchen, located across the street from Chase-Duckett dining hall. These food donations help Manna to continue providing nourishing meals to food-insecure individuals. Manna is open Monday-Saturday and serves about 1,500 meals each week. Through FRN, Manna has access to a substantial amount of extra food at no cost, allowing them to serve more people than they otherwise would have the budget for (Azulay). 

Since the start of the 2023-2024 school year Smith FRN has collected over 10,000 pounds of food for donation. Additionally, during the 2023-24 school year Smith FRN implemented a new program to collect excess food from on-campus catered events. These catered events had previously been neglected in the Smith food rescue effort. 

Overall, the impact of Smith FRN is considerable and has resulted in a massive amount of food being diverted from the landfill and going to people who will benefit. Increasing participation and awareness about this food recovery program could allow FRN to pick up leftover food from breakfast and lunch, increasing the positive impact this group has on the community. 

Possible Improvements: 

Although Smith has mitigated food waste by using smaller plates, carefully considering portions, and rescuing uneaten food for donation, there is always room for improvement. A visit to the Smith dining halls will reveal both trash and compost bins full of uneaten food. This is a clear sign that something else needs to be done to increase the sustainability of our campus. 

One simple and low-cost measure that Smith Dining could implement is educational intervention. Signs reminding students that they can get seconds and infographics that display the benefits of wasting less food would help bring this campus-wide problem into the spotlight. Dining halls could also allow students to weigh their food waste, providing students with a chance to think critically about how they contribute to the problem and possibly allow them to see their improvement over time (Food Loss). Many students have become habituated to wasting food, but increasing awareness of the prevalence of food waste could help people reevaluate their patterns.

Additionally, a sampling system could be put in place, allowing students to taste a dish before they plate it. Bon Appetit Management Co. (BAMCo) conducted a study on the efficacy of tasting spoons in reducing food waste in their locations. They initially surveyed diners about their food waste and found that about a quarter of survey respondents said they threw away food because they “didn’t like it.” After implementing tasting spoons in their chosen locations, BAMCo found, on average, that guests individually wasted 1 oz less per meal (decrease from 1.75 oz food wasted/ guest to 0.79 oz/ guest). This also led to fewer survey respondents saying that they wasted food because they did not enjoy it (from 26% down to 19%). This indicates that tasting spoons had a favorable impact on reducing food waste (Bon Appétit). 

If Smith Dining were to introduce tasting spoons, there are a few additional considerations that would have to be made. The spoons should be reusable, so that we avoid single-use disposable waste. This will lead to more dishes for the dining staff and student workers to clean, which may or may not be significant. Having people taste food may also slow down the flow through the buffet line. During busy times this would not be ideal, but the possible economic and environmental benefits of tasting spoons may be great enough to warrant this inconvenience. 

Smith Dining could also try to make more dining experiences similar to the ‘build your own’ style seen at Haynes dining hall. The ‘build your own’ model used to include menus like stir fry, pasta and grain bowls; recently the menu has been pared down to only include stir fry. Initially, these dining halls only offered the ‘build your own’ meals on Wednesday nights. When the head chef noticed the amount of food waste produced on Wednesdays lowered drastically, he suggested that the style become constant throughout the week. The reason for this lower amount of waste comes from the fact that the ingredients are carefully temperature controlled and the menu is the same for an entire week. This allows the dining staff to simply put leftover meal components away and finish them off the next night. Smith Dining has since tried to implement this style of food service into Chase and Tyler dining halls, but was faced with the issue of not having enough electrical capacity to run the hot plates specifically needed for meals like stir fry. It is possible that the ‘do it yourself’ style of dining could be expanded if houses receive updates that increase their electrical capacity. Based on the apparent popularity of the ‘build your own’ style of dining among Smith students, this would be a welcome change that would also make Smith a more sustainable campus. 

Conclusion:

College food waste is a real problem. It is costing schools money, burdening the environment, and it’s a prime example of a missed opportunity to benefit the community. Smith’s community has made a conscious effort to be a part of the solution. Smith Dining is trying to reduce the occurrence of wasting ingredients and aims to limit the overproduction of food. Smith students have come together to rescue food that was otherwise destined for the landfill and instead donate it to people who are in need. 

The longer that the Smith community waits to make a change, the more food and money that will be wasted. Smith’s efforts are a start, but more can be done. Introducing additional measures like educational outreach in the dining halls, tasting spoons, and more ‘build your own’ style dining would help Smith move closer to its goal of being more sustainable. We can make a change now by being more conscious about the amount of food that we serve ourselves. Serve yourself as much as you think you are hungry for and go back for seconds if needed. Swipe your card at the dining halls so that chefs can get data on how popular certain meals are and can estimate the number of servings that need to be made. Giving honest feedback to the dining staff, through the survey, will allow chefs to make improvements to the meals based on student responses. All of these are simple solutions that can lead to change if enough people come together to make a difference. 

Works Cited 

“Annual Reports.” Food Recovery Network, www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/annual-reports. Accessed 12 Apr. 2024. 

Azulay, Shastia. “Proposal to Implement An Institutional Food Recovery System and Fortify Existing Sustainable Programs on Campus.” Smith Scholar Works, 9 Feb. 2023, scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=other_projects.

Bon Appétit Management, “Study Finds College Students Waste 112 Pounds of Food per School Year.” Bon Appétit Management Co., 17 Feb. 2021, www.bamco.com/press-releases/study-finds-college-students-waste-112-pounds-of-food per-school-year/. 

Cox, Andrew. Interview. Conducted by Ava Carroll. 12 April 2024. 

Dellecese, Cheryl. “Putting a Face to Hunger.” Home: Smith College, 10 Dec. 2019, www.smith.edu/news-events/news/putting-face-hunger. 

“Dining in Community: Recommendations.” Dining in Community: Recommendations | Smith College, 11 Nov. 2019, www.smith.edu/about-smith/residential-experience/dining-in-community. 

Food Loss Prevention Options for Universities, Aug. 2016, www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-08/documents/food_loss_prevention_options_unive rsities_august_2016.pdf. 

“Food Waste Faqs.” USDA, www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs. Accessed 12 Apr. 2024.

Ishangulyyev, Rovshen, et al. Understanding Food Loss and Waste-Why Are We Losing and Wasting Food?, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 29 July 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723314/#:~:text=Concepts-,Definitions,kept% 20beyond%20its%20expiry%20date. 

Poon, Linda. “When Food Is Too Good to Waste, College Kids Pick up the Scraps.” NPR, NPR, 27 Feb. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/27/389284061/when-food-is-too-good-to-waste-college-kids-pick-up-the-scraps.