Dartblog

Because there are some Animal House references and because it is such an inadequate idea, I thought I would post about a recent initiative to get rid of trays at some colleges across the country. The idea is that this will decrease the amount of water and electricity used to wash the trays and decrease the amount of food wasted by students who just load up their trays.

Taking the second goal first, I would find it incredibly insulting if someone said to me, “You can’t judge how much you can eat, here let me decide for you.” Students may eat less, only from the one or two plates they can carry back to their table, judging it not worth the hassle to go back for a second trip. But what’s next? Are they going to make the plates smaller and smaller until students have to get back in line for every shrimp.

Returning to the first goal, the other idea is that trays are just one more things to wash and not having them will save water. But witness one students comment in a Washington Post article about the initiative:

“I think that’s kind of ridiculous,” said freshman Rebecca Riffle, who used a legal-size notebook to help carry her plate to a table. “Whenever there’s a bunch of people here at one time, it gets crazy. You have people bumping into you, so if you’re balancing stuff, you’re going to end up dropping something or breaking something.”

It does not save resources if plates are dropped and food wasted. A single smashed plate takes as much energy to manufacture, ship, etc than scores of tray washes. More likely, in my mind, is the scenario that students will just use makeshift trays, like the student here using a notebook. If there is a demand for trays, the demand will be filled. And again, just a few binder or notebook or legal pad getting tomato sauce spilled on it and ruined will far exceed the savings from not having trays.

Dartmouth does dining pretty well in this respect. The pay-for-what-you-eat system provides natural incentive to only take the food you are going to eat. This is much better than a one-size-fits-all buffet system that encourages gluttony to get your money’s worth. Even better would be an increasing balance account (rather than decreasing). Then students would truly only pay for what they want, without the knowledge that, for example, they might as well just grab things because they never use up all their DBA dining money anyway. And of course this would put Dartmouth Dining in to competition with the full market of dining choices, making food better and minimizing waste all around.

But I digress. Dartmouth does dining pretty well, certainly much better than the silly schools getting rid of their trays. I just hope no one seizes on this idea at our College.