In the Gerber Center dining hall, students are able to grab as much as they’d like from any of the food stations. This buffet style is great for college students because it provides a wide variety of foods and is cost-effective. Unfortunately, this structure leads to the school wasting their food supply and unnecessary costs.

Brianna Ebenroth, junior, works in the dining hall and has noticed
a lot of food waste.

“Students can go up if they need more, but a lot of the time people will just load up their plate and then throw out more than half of the food that they got,” Ebenroth said.

Ebenroth believes many students take away more food than is needed either because their eyes are bigger than their stomachs or because they’re trying to get the most out of their meal swipe.

“Sometimes people just grab everything that looks good at first glance,” Ebenroth said.

While students may be wasteful with food, Fred Kurt, the director of dining services at Augustana says that the dining facilities on campus work to be sustainable.

“We are very mindful of waste. In starting with our production of foods, we forecast. It’s guessing how many people are going to come through the door and how much of every item we are going to produce,” Kurt said.

This forecasting takes into account the number of students that generally come into the dining hall on any given day, as well as how much food is being taken.

If students are taking a lot of food on any given day, that signals dining services to keep putting out more.

“Customer waste is about four to five times higher than what is produced in the kitchen,” Kurt said, regarding recent audits of dining services.

This means that while sometimes forecasts can be wrong and food that is already cooked can be wasted, the blame for food waste generally lies with the students who are taking the food.

“[I understand] it’s all you care to eat and you want to get your money’s worth, but hopefully, whatever you’re taking, you’re eating,” Kurt said. “If our costs are not in line, we’ll really review what our increases have to be in our board rates for the meal plans.”

Food waste is an issue and there are ways that Augustana can become more sustainable in this respect. This could include donating food to shelters and churches, creating compost piles or continue to educate the campus about food consumption habits.

In order to address food waste concerns, a lot is already being done by dining services to repurpose foods. Ebenroth said that in comparison to other schools, Augustana may actually be more sustainable.

“For the repurposing of food, if you compare Augustana to other colleges, we do a really great job of utilizing food and being smart to not waste it,” Ebenroth said. “A lot of the soups that are made, we really utilize some things that didn’t go out. We are able to repurpose it.”

Ebenroth also said that there is also another route used to utilize food that would otherwise go to waste.

“When workers are done for the night if there’s stuff that’s going to be thrown away, they are asked if they want it,” Ebenroth said.