Going green, that’s per se a good thing and I’m all for it. In today’s Chicago Tribune I found an article about colleges going green. However, the headline: “Friendly to planet, rude to diners” suggests that something is going wrong. And I believe there are several things going wrong. Lake Forest College decided to remove trays from cafeterias.

Removing the trays, they say, reduces food waste, conserves water and energy used in cleaning and reduces the need for polluting detergents. Looking further at the pictures in the article I noticed that the food is served on plastic plates. Without having evidence in the pictures I assume that drinks are served in plastic cups and there are plastic forks and knifes.

Lets analyze this situation a little further and have a look at the reduction of food waste. Food waste is probably the least problematic waste there is because it’s bio degradable. Our digestive system proves this fact on a daily basis. So what’s the real problem with food waste? The real problem is that food waste costs money in the cafeteria and that’s not good for business. First and foremost reducing food waste increases cafeteria profit. That’s not a bad thing in itself but it has nothing to do with going green. It’s good business practice. Using the trays as a vehicle to achieve this goal is not the smartest way but putting it down as going green makes a good case.

Conserving water and energy is not bad either. Isn’t that what we all want. But again I’m suspicious that this is driven by simple business calculation and not by going green. As I mentioned above, food is served on plastic which makes cleaning the trays the only part which requires a commercial dishwasher and manual labor. That’s money right there. But there are many studies showing that it is more beneficial to the environment to use real plates and silverware and wash them than to create tons of waste of plastic dining utensils. Thus, keeping the trays and removing the plastic dinnerware would have been the right choice of going green. But this decision would have required an investment without an immediate gratification.

Last but not least there are the polluting detergents. Again, studies show that a full [emphasis on full] dishwasher uses less energy and water than handwashing dishes. There are biodegradable detergents that are environmentally safe. But again that’s not a simple change. It’s easier to remove the trays being the last piece that requires a dishwasher, get rid of the dishwasher and put it all in a green perspective.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.