Shane Wade
Opinion Editor
Millions of Twitter accounts flared in terror last week when rumors of an oncoming bacon shortage surfaced.
Although it’s now debatable whether the news has substance, the student body and the university should use this news spotlight as an opportunity to re-evaluate both food wastes, particularly those of the meat variety, and food conservation.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 21.5 million tons of food waste is dumped into landfills annually; 75 percent of the solid waste found there is recyclable, but only 30 percent of it is actually recycled. That’s just a minor illustration of the global epic that is the tale of human waste. The scope of the problem we face is monumental; if you don’t believe me, Google “Great Pacific Garbage Dump.”
The U.S. beef industry is a $79 billion business, with Americans consuming 25.6 billion pounds of meat annually. It’s also the most pervasive of food industries because, in both nutritional sense and economic sense, our plates revolve around meat; along with the 80 percent of the water that we consume that goes into producing food, a large portion of grain production is reserved into feed for cattle and pigs. Furthermore, over 50 percent of the U.S. land area is dedicated to food production. That bacon we so praise comprises a billion dollar industry, and a good portion of it goes to waste.
VCU Dining Services does a remarkable amount in terms of financing programs and organizing campaigns, including green initiatives that support sustainable fisheries, composting food waste, and recycling cooking oil into bio-diesel. That level of commitment has led us to be one of the top “green” universities in a nation where citizens waste 33 million tons of food annually.
For a campus of our size, the 4,000 pounds of food wasted two weeks ago, as reported by VCU Dining Service’s Facebook page, seems comparably low and manageable, but it’s not low enough.
Just as the university does their part to create a more sustainable and environmentally friendly environment here, so do students, independently from their organizations. Individual responsibility for oneself is often overlooked and undermanaged in Western society.
A tragedy of the commons has been proliferated over numerous issues, from the over-share of resources available to the public to the under-share of profits from industrial corporations that rely on the public. The diffusion of responsibility we’ve come to recognize as daily life starts with the smallest, most forgettable actions, like leaving a tap running.
Every semester, for three weeks, Dining Services focuses their green dining initiative campaign on encouraging students to develop a habit of reduction in relation to the amount of food they pile on their plates at Shafer. That campaign should be adopted by each and every student at this university, all the time.
It’s not VCU’s responsibility to make sure students aren’t rapturous food waste producers. It’s our own.