The Tragedy of the Dining Hall Commons

The Food Recovery Network estimates that college campuses in the US account for 22 million pounds of food waste annually, with each college student wasting nearly 142 pounds of food every year. Cornell isn’t an exception, even though Cornell Dining is ranked third in the country in terms of the quality of its food.

Most college students know food waste is an environmental crisis. When discarded in landfills, it produces methane, contributing to the depletion of our ozone layer. The production of  food that no one eats dwindles our limited supply of fresh water, land, and energy. But why do we do continue to waste? Food waste largely persists because we can waste without feeling bad about ourselves. If we could lie and not feel guilty afterwards, we’d do it all the time. The problem is not our behaviors, but that we have detached our emotions from our actions. It’s all psychology.

Cornell’s dining halls are structured like all-you-can-eat buffets. We all know the feeling of entering a buffet. As we see the smorgasbord of food, the salivation and anxiety set in. We want a taste of everything. Consequently, we fill up our plates, waste some, then get a new clean plate so we can taste and waste more. Similar consumer-serving businesses like hotels face the same issue, contributing to nearly 40 percent of food waste. Dining halls are a tragedy of the buffet commons.

Dining hall food waste stems from a seemingly unlimited food supply. Trays accentuate this. Dining facilities with trays generate 25 to 30 percent more food waste than tray-less facilities. Using a tray is like having a large hand to hold many plates — trays facilitate greed and ultimately more waste. Without trays, students will consume less and dining halls will produce less as demand decreases. So far, Cornell Dining has eliminated trays in the West Campus facilities and Risley. But we need to trash all the trays, especially in RPCC where the novelty of dining halls is still fresh among first-years.

Another issue with the structure of most dining halls is that we don’t see our waste go in the trash. Instead, we place our dirty dishes onto a conveyor belt and watch as they vanish around the corner. As our wasted food disappears, so do our feelings of social responsibility. Since we aren’t doing the wasting, we lose moral accountability for our actions. I can attest that throwing away spoiled food from my fridge myself feels much worse than placing a plate of leftovers on the belt for someone else to take care of.

There have been many psychology studies of the mirror effect, showing that we behave more ethically when we quite literally look at ourselves. In one study, children were left in a room with a bowl of candy but were told not to take any. In the experimental condition, the room had a mirror facing the child. The results showed that the children in the room with a mirror were significantly less likely to steal candy. Much like these children, Cornell students still perform behaviors even though they know it’s wrong, but if they had to do it themselves…?

As we look at our reflection, we gain self-awareness. The cause of this is cognitive dissonance, a theory coined by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957. When our behavior does not align with our beliefs, the inconsistency is cognitively uncomfortable, which is enhanced when looking in the mirror. To alleviate our discomfort, we change our actions. Both the mirror effect and cognitive dissonance explain the food waste paradox. Wasting food goes against our morals, yet we still do it. The issue is not that college students lack self-awareness, but that the discomfort from wasting food is not strong enough to influence behavior.

Using emotion is an effective way to reduce waste, but it would be silly to place mirrors everywhere. Instead, Cornell Dining needs to implement strategies that spark people’s guilty consciences and make them feel uncomfortable. Some dining halls, like Cook House, have implemented “sustainability monitors” that stand by the conveyor belt looming over both you and your plate. Though this task seems rather mundane, the presence of an authority figure makes students more likely to comply. The strategy, however, is not widespread.

Another step Cornell Dining can take towards food waste reduction is to make it harder for students to be greedy. To mitigate the buffet effect, dining hall staff could control all portions, not just the meat. But doing so would take a lot of resources, and Cornell Dining is not well-staffed enough to allocate workers to do portion-controlling at all stations.

When it comes to wasting food, Cornell students have the discipline of five year olds still learning right from wrong. Cornell Dining needs to step up its parenting and we all need to take a hard look in the mirror