Paul Hedreen

Start Here, Take Food Waste Reduction Everywhere: Building a Plan to Improve Climate Impacts at Borough of Manhattan Community College

On Wednesday, May 10th, I presented a poster showing my independent research into a potential project to effect climate change impact reduction by a student group on campus. In addition to my poster, I also presented a powerpoint presentation to explain and contextualize my research. As follows is an abridged transcript of my presentation:

My name is Paul Hedreen and I am an economics student here at BMCC. My submission to BARS consisted of a literature review towards finding a practical, but effective project to reduce climate impacts on campus. This presentation will detail how I came up with this project, give some background information, and show why I think food waste reduction is the most practical and effective goal that we can have as a school to reduce climate impacts, today. Before I begin, I would like to thank my faculty mentor Dr. Farias, as well as the BMCC Economics, Environment, and Equality club, especially club president Tenzin Sinon.

This project was borne out of the EEE club here at BMCC. Dr. Farias suggested to the club that we come up with a project to participate in the Global University Climate Forum, a program run by the Environmental Innovations Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. The forum encourages student-led groups to submit projects that will help combat climate change, with the goal of helping those groups implement those projects on their own campuses. Dr. Farias brought the forum to the attention of the club, and it was decided that I would lead a group here at BMCC. Sadly, the forum was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, so our project is no longer affiliated with the program.

In looking at student projects associated with the forum in prior years, I saw that many projects were focused completely, or nearly completely, on raising awareness among campus communities about how personal choices can have climate impacts. While that is not incorrect, I believe that if we want to prevent disastrous climate effects, it is imperative to effect change beyond one’s own life, to drive change at the institutional level.

On the other hand, I needed to come up with a plan that was realistic and actionable. It is all well and good to propose that BMCC go carbon neutral tomorrow, but that project would never leave the theoretical stages.

The plan also needed to be able to work in BMCC’s unique campus situation. BMCC has no residential students, and its campus consists of three buildings in Tribeca. Obviously, something like a tree-planting campaign would be much more difficult to implement here than at the University of Wyoming.

After accounting for these factors, I decided that our group was best situated to pursue a project in the area of food waste reduction.

Project Drawdown is a non-profit organization dedicated to finding actionable, everyday solutions to mitigate the effects of climate crisis. It is unlikely that a “silver bullet” solution will be found. Instead, efforts to mitigate climate impacts must be pursued everywhere. According to Project Drawdown’s library of solutions, global food waste reduction has the potential to prevent 88.5 to 102.2 gigatons of CO2 reduction between now and 2050. In a scenario where global temperature increases are limited to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, food waste reduction is the single most effective strategy to reduce or sequester carbon emissions. The second most effective strategy in that scenario? Promoting plant-rich diets.

Composting has attracted a lot of attention as a solution to high food waste levels, but it is not a perfect solution. It is certainly better than sending food waste to landfills, but composting is often energy intensive, and the process has its own emissions. In addition to the difficulties of the logistics of composting, this solution fails to address to massive land and economic investment in the 40% of food in America that goes uneaten. According to a 2021 report by ReFed, a non-profit dedicating to ending food waste, uneaten food is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, 14% of all freshwater use, 18% of cropland use, and 24% of landfill inputs. This surplus food, of which only 2% is donated, has a yearly dollar value of 408 billion. 201 billion of that food waste occurs at consumer-facing businesses, including campus cafeterias.

Now, let’s narrow the scope to BMCC. According to the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, colleges and universities in NYC waste an estimated 30,115 tons of food every year.

In 2017, Aleksandra Artyfikiewicz, an economics student at BMCC, conducted a waste audit at the BMCC cafeteria for a research project. According to her findings, over a fifteen day period, the BMCC cafeteria kitchen wastes 656 lb of food. That is an average of just over 50 pounds/day (the cafeteria was closed on Sundays).

Of course, this data is from 2017, and that rate may very well have changed since then. One of the first steps of the project moving forward would be to get an updated survey of cafeteria food waste.

However, even despite the potential for inaccuracy due to being outdated, this data does not even take into account the food that is thrown away by students outside the kitchen, it is only food waste from the kitchen itself.

According to a 2021 report from the Hope Center at Temple University, 38% of students at 2-year colleges across the country are food insecure, and another 13% have “marginal” food security. BMCC students are well-served by the Panther Pantry and other resources from the Advocacy and Resource Center here on campus, but it seems that the twin issues of campus food waste and campus food insecurity could be married to help solve one another.

So, in light of this problem of food waste, what exactly is our goal on campus? It consists of three main missions:

First, is raising awareness on campus of the climate impacts of food waste, and diet choices. Remember, promoting plant-rich diets is another effective strategy to combat climate change. We want to reach everyone in the BMCC community, including students, support staff, faculty, and administration.

The second goal is to work with MBJ, the cafeteria vendor, to reduce food waste. MBJ has apparently been willing to collaborate with student groups on similar projects in the past, so we are hoping they will play ball with us. To be fair to MBJ, they know much better than a student group what kind of work and logistics goes into managing a campus cafeteria. It would be impossible to develop a realistic plan to reduce food waste without their collaboration. Thus, their cooperation is instrumental in our project, which is another reason why the first goal is so important.

Finally, we must ensure that food waste reduction can be continually monitored. I truly believe that this project has the potential to make a big impact on campus, but only if all parties are committed to long term changes. By implementing a system of transparency that is perpetual, we are ensuring that these efforts won’t end when we graduate, or go off on summer break.

So, what do we need to do today, tomorrow, and the next week to get this project up and running?

First, we need to establish some baselines. We can survey the BMCC community on their behavior in the cafeteria, and determine things like how often the cafeteria is used, how much awareness there is of diet choice and food waste affecting climate impacts, and whether people are satisfied with food options.

We also need to find out how much food is still being wasted at BMCC. We can conduct a new survey of kitchen food waste levels, and also find out how much food is being wasted in trash bins in the cafeteria, that is, food being thrown out by students after they have bought it.

Next, we can begin raising awareness among the community about these issues. We can use both conventional things like posters, but also social media accounts and the TV monitors around campus to give an ongoing flow of information. One good idea that came out of the EEE Club was to have a large poster out in the lobby, that we could update with how much food had been wasted in the last week, so that students can get a feel for the ongoing nature of this problem. This may also cause community members to make changes at the individual level.

It is also during this stage that we can reach out to MBJ to try and collaborate on solutions to reducing food waste immediately. Again, they are the ones running the kitchen, so their knowledge and willingness to cooperate are imperative. This reduction could come from both a reduction of food made in the first place, and a system so that food-insecure students might have access to food that would otherwise be thrown away. Again, the reason we need to work with them is that they are the ones with the ability to find workable solutions.

Finally, we must put together a system to maintain these reduced levels of food waste. There was a student group about five years ago that implemented a similar project as this, that was dedicated to composting. However, once that group of students left BMCC, there was no momentum for the project to continue, and their efforts are no longer felt at BMCC today. By working with MBJ and BMCC administration to find a way to ensure food waste levels stay reduced, then we know that this effort will stick. This system could consist of an online dashboard, for example, or a more permanent poster near the cafeteria that can be updated weekly or monthly. This project could also tie into things like BMCC clubs, or environmental science or environmental economics courses, so that those students can have a real world project to help their learning, and the project is maintained by a steady stream of students.

In conclusion, this project is meant to be a both realistic and effective way of reducing climate impacts on campus. I truly believe that this project is attainable, and will have a real effect. In addition to the primary reduction of climate impacts by reducing food waste, this project will also be highly public and community-facing. Hopefully, that will inspire people to be more climate-aware in all aspects of their lives. If we have a fighting chance to save our planet, and mitigate the already disastrous effects of climate change, then we must encourage change everywhere, and this project could help bring about the change in attitude, from apathy to awareness and most importantly action, that is very much needed on our campus, in this city, and around the world.

Thank you.