Whither Bluto Blutarsky?

Ah, college, where the next party is but a dorm room away, and sustenance simply involves stumbling toward the nearest dining hall. But all is not well on campus, as a new Ohio University study on food waste threatens to harsh everyone’s buzz.

Audits conducted during dinner service over the course of four Mondays at Ohio University’s Jefferson Dining Hall measured the amount of edible food students dispose. The audits, which were overseen by the school’s Office of Sustainability, omitted kitchen waste, non-edible food waste (banana peels, bones, apple cores, etc.) and trash.

Over the four days, students averaged 5.40 ounces of food waste per person, a number the school calls “unusually high” when compared with other schools (a similar study found Harvard students averaged 3.3 ounces of food waste). The waste generated on the first day of the audit was enough to feed 330 people, school officials added.

Students polled after results of the audit were published seemed eager to reduce the amount of waste. Cutting the number of impromptu zit impressions alone will conserve several hundred pounds of mashed potatoes each month.

Source: Ohio University Office of Sustainability