by Albert Zhang
Note: This article is part of a series of student editorials submitted to the annual New York Times Editorial Contest. If you submitted an editorial and would like to be published on The Helix, please contact the Co-Editors-in-Chief.
Elementary school children eating lunch during the school day. (Credit: Unsplash)
A steady stream of chatter flows out of the high school cafeteria as the lunch block nears its end. We are just finishing up our last drops of milk, but the plates around us are a different story. Some half-eaten pizzas are unattended to, while most students have not even touched their sides of corn. Suddenly, a junior walks up to the garbage cans at the front of the room and casually throws out a foil wrapper with half of a cheeseburger still tucked in it.
This waste of food is common in American schools, and as someone who relies on school lunch every day, it is a huge problem.
We often underestimate the magnitude of this issue; much more food is wasted than you might think. In fact, a study conducted by Penn State University showed that plate waste at a Missouri private school ranged from 27 percent to 53 percent of total food served. This study was designed so that “It can be compared with other school cafeterias in the U.S.” In other words, the results reflect on the US school system as a whole, as well as the 30 million students who participate in the lunch program.
As these numbers suggest, the food waste created in schools across the US is tremendous. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that plate waste equals 530,000 tons of food and 45 million gallons of milk per year. This translates into a total of 2.26 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas, 1.84 billion US dollars, and 27.4 billion gallons of water; these are just some of the costs of producing the food.
Where does it all go from the trash can? Sadly, over seventy percent of food waste goes to the landfill, with only a fraction being recycled through processes such as composting. Food in landfills decomposes and releases the greenhouse gas methane, which contributes to global warming.
In America, food is “cheap and easily accessible;” as a result, many students do not think twice before throwing their lunches out. Some argue that the food is to blame, not the students. Indeed, fruits and vegetables are more unpopular and have a higher chance of being thrown out. However, on a daily basis I see fries and half-eaten pizzas in the trash cans or left forgotten on the lunch tables.
So to all you students out there, next time you think about getting a school lunch, ask yourself this: am I actually hungry? If the answer is no, then you’ll probably just end up throwing most of the food out. In that case, it would be better to not get any in the first place.