Opinion: Students should eat with a mind toward sustainability

T he University is a leader in many categories, but it has tangible room for improvement in both  waste minimization and low-impact dining.

According to the most recent report by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), UNC respectively scored 1.5 out of five and one out of three in those respective categories.

The University should strive for perfection and set a goal to earn full points in these categories the next time they are assessed.

Reaching this goal begins with the actions of individual students, some of whom are reading this editorial over breakfast or lunch.

Feeding the Five Thousand founder Tristram Stuart astutely pointed this out in a Wednesday article in The Daily Tar Heel about food waste.

“You as an individual can help alleviate those problems by taking only what you need and eating what you take,” he said.

Students, whether eating in the dining halls or preparing food for themselves, should take this advice to heart. By reducing portion sizes and saving otherwise wasted food to eat later, the individual can have an enormous effect on how much food the University community wastes.

To remind students of their obligation to waste less, Carolina Dining Services features a poster describing a meal’s many inputs in the dining halls.

The goal of this poster — to reduce food wasted by students putting food on their plates that will go uneaten — would come closer to being achieved if it were placed near the point of consumption rather than the point of disposal.

CDS should consider placing the same poster in sticker form on the dining halls’ sneeze guards.

As a leader in sustainability, UNC should ensure less is being wasted by helping students make more conscious decisions.