"Clean Your Plate" campaign finds 3,033 lbs. of food wasted last week in D-hall from 5 to 8 p.m.
By Carly LeDuc, staff writer
Posted on April 27, 2006

D-hall. It’s a central point for many JMU students with the added bonus of being all-you-can eat.

But at D-hall there’s a problem, which many JMU students overlook. When provided with the opportunity of an all-you-can-eat buffet-style cafeteria, many times students’ eyes become bigger than their stomachs. That’s why JMU’s Community Service Learning started the Clean Your Plate campaign.

Last week, volunteers collected plates before they went through the tray return and collected all the leftover food on them. At the end of the week, they calculated that over 3,000 pounds of food were wasted last week in D-hall by JMU students, faculty and staff, said Jillian Treacy, the Aging Services Coordinator for Community Service-Learning. She said that amount of food can feed 101 families for four months. Also the amount  was collected only between 5 and 8 p.m. If that weight were multiplied by the number of weeks of class, it would reach about 46,000 pounds.

Correcting the problem is a piece of cake.

“That’s simple — portioning” Treacy said. “Don’t take more than you are able to eat. D-hall is an all-you-can-eat buffet, which means you can get more food if you need to.”

The information collected through the Clean Yo’ Plate program will be posted around D-hall this week and at the Annual Hunger Banquet April 26.

“We’re hoping that the JMU community will try to assess their own contribution to food waste and lessen the amount wasted in their own lives,” Treacy said.