The Bread and Butter of Food Justice
by Lucille Ketterer
Stop and consider the number of waste bins lying around Bucknell. There is one on every sidewalk, on each floor of a building, and tucked away in dorm rooms. That is because the United States has largely morphed into a throw-away society². Overconsumption and excessive production describe the current tendency of marketers and consumers. Unfortunately, the same mindset has slipped into the food industry. Think about Bucknell. Here, the majority of students have not only enough food, but too much — to the point where it is being wasted. How can that be just when others go without? At my local parish, for example, donations are collected weekly for school children in Haiti who lack daily meals. While Bucknell may not be able to ship Tuesday’s leftovers to Haiti for supper, it can promote food justice on a local level.
Having been established that Bucknell, like the rest of the country, struggles with food waste, where does the problem begin? Our trouble with food waste stems from requiring unlimited meal plans, having liberal buffets, and an improper care of leftovers. By mandating that all freshman buy unlimited meal swipes, students feel the need to “get their money’s worth.” Yet, to do so requires visiting Bostwick often and prompts overeating. In other words, open season begins. Buffets, as well, foster a tendency to try everything, throwing away whatever displeases the appetite. As a result, “all you can eat” becomes what Amanda Lim calls “all you can waste”⁷. Finally, if food cannot be produced more prudently, then Bucknell should improve their practices around leftovers. To demonstrate this need for improvement, the Environmental Club in 2018 held a food challenge. For two hours at dinnertime, five gallon buckets sat in front of the cafeteria’s conveyor belt. Students used them to scrape off leftovers before putting their dishware on the belt. In a mere two hours, the Environmental Club collected 55 pounds of unwanted food. As confirmed by studies, those who saw the buckets of food tended to waste less going forward⁹.
This phenomena happens because it halts an out of sight, out of mind mentality. Nevertheless, food waste at Bucknell endures.
While food waste from a single campus appears negligible, imagine the amount thrown away from all U.S. colleges, plus every residential home, and not to mention every business corporation. It adds up. In fact, U.S. citizens squander 30–40% of all food produced, amounting to 133 billion pounds per year¹⁰. Having such abundance, how can we let 870 million of our worldly brothers and sisters live in starvation⁵? Despite lofty calls to end world hunger, very little is being done to stop food waste on the home-front. From an environmental perspective, the earth suffers as well. 95% of food waste goes to landfills — releasing a host of greenhouse gases and contributing to rising global temperatures⁸. Due to a lack of care around waste, our country and our campus breed unequal users and consumers of food.
Bucknell need not be part of the problem, but the solution. With its immense power, influence, and funding, Bucknell could alleviate food waste and thereby advance food justice. There are two ways of doing this: one preventative, the other reactive. A first step towards prevention entails removing the unlimited freshman meal plan at a buffet-style dining hall. Aside from the unfairness of forcing students to pay high prices for unneeded items, it would cut down on the aforementioned effects of a buffet mindset. While at the dining halls, enjoying appropriate portions would mean less gets thrown away. Dining staff can also lessen waste artificially by implementing set serving sizes. To make students even more aware, publishing nutritional value signs and messages on eliminating food waste have been shown to decrease the amount of food taken and amount bound for the trash³.
Prevention only goes so far. Bucknell should also act reactively, utilizing its power to properly dispose of leftovers. Although the regulations prohibit touched food from being redistributed⁶, recycling remains an option. In the past, Bucknell had a relationship with a local farmer where all food scraps were sent to him for composting¹. Not having this relationship, however, is not an excuse for avoiding recycling. With a new university farm, food waste can be deposited there for a second life as compost or fertilizer. Additionally, in previous years the dining services sent excess produce to the primates living across Highway 15⁴. Both of these initiatives kept food out of the landfill and minimized the cost of buying animal food as well as compost from outside vendors.
Eliminating food waste proves a tall order. It requires a desire to be better and want better — not only for other human beings, but also for the earth. Unless you deem it acceptable that men and women are left to starve, or that earth is the new word for landfill, think twice about what goes onto your dinner plate, and what comes off.
Works Cited
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Busch, Jane Celia. “The Throwaway Ethic of America.” Penn Libraries, 1983, doi:
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Fitzpatrick, Tara. “Primates Feast on Bucknell Dining’s Kitchen Scraps.” Food Management, 11 June 2018,
www.food-management.com/colleges-universities/primates-feast-bucknell-dining-s-kitchen-scraps.
Guy-Allen, Clea. “The World’s 10 Hungriest Countries.” Global Citizen, 10 Mar. 2014,
www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/the-worlds-10-hungriest-countries/.
Haneklau, Josie. “Opinion: Food Waste on College Campuses Is Extreme.” The Breeze, 3 Dec. 2018,
Lim, Amanda. “All You Can Waste? Large Buffets Are Asia’s Food Waste Nightmare.” Reduce, Reuse, Rethink, Winnow, 30 Aug. 2019,
blog.winnowsolutions.com/buffets-are-asias-largest-food-waste-producer.
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Estimating the Energy Content.” Open Engineering, vol. 3, no. 2, 2013,
doi:10.2478/s13531–012–0058–5.
Strawser, Justin. “Bucknell Club Scrape Leftovers for Consumption Demonstration.” The Daily Item, 20 Apr. 2018,
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