Most students probably do not spend much time thinking about their trays after lunch.
You finish eating, scrape off what is left, throw everything into the right bins, or at least what you think are the right bins, and leave. Usually, that is the end of it.
But for Todd, who works in Blair’s dining hall, it is not.
I started noticing him sorting through the compost after meals. He would pull out plastic forks, wrappers, cups, and other things that students had accidentally thrown away with their food. Since Blair’s compost is sent to local farms, plastic mixed into it has to be removed.
It looked like a tedious job, especially because a lot of the mistakes were avoidable.
At first, I did not think much about it beyond that. But after seeing Todd do it several times, I started paying more attention to what happened around the compost bins.
I noticed students doing the same thing.
Someone would be about to throw everything from their tray into the compost, then stop and pull out a piece of plastic. Sometimes one student would tell another that something belonged in a different bin. It was not a huge change, and definitely not everyone was suddenly sorting perfectly, but people seemed to be thinking about it more.
That interested me because nobody had made a big announcement about it.
There was no assembly telling students to pay more attention to their lunch waste. There was no major campaign. Students were simply seeing what happened after they left their trays behind.
When plastic ends up in the compost, it is easy to think of it as a small mistake. But the mistake does not disappear. Someone has to fix it, and a lot of the time that person is Todd.
Seeing that made the whole process feel more personal.
It is one thing to see signs telling you what goes in compost and what goes in trash. It is another thing to watch someone sort through the things people put in the wrong place.
The dining hall is also one of those places where a lot of work happens without students really noticing it. We walk in, food is ready, tables are cleaned, dishes disappear, and then we move on with our day. It is easy to forget that there are people behind all of those things.
Todd’s compost sorting is just one example.
And while separating one plastic wrapper might not seem like much, it does make his job a little easier. If more students take a few extra seconds before leaving their trays, there is less for him to sort through later.
Students still make mistakes, of course. Plastic still ends up in the compost.
But now I notice more people stopping before they throw something away.
Sometimes that pause is only a few seconds.
Still, it is a start.
You finish eating, scrape off what is left, throw everything into the right bins, or at least what you think are the right bins, and leave. Usually, that is the end of it.
But for Todd, who works in Blair’s dining hall, it is not.
I started noticing him sorting through the compost after meals. He would pull out plastic forks, wrappers, cups, and other things that students had accidentally thrown away with their food. Since Blair’s compost is sent to local farms, plastic mixed into it has to be removed.
It looked like a tedious job, especially because a lot of the mistakes were avoidable.
At first, I did not think much about it beyond that. But after seeing Todd do it several times, I started paying more attention to what happened around the compost bins.
I noticed students doing the same thing.
Someone would be about to throw everything from their tray into the compost, then stop and pull out a piece of plastic. Sometimes one student would tell another that something belonged in a different bin. It was not a huge change, and definitely not everyone was suddenly sorting perfectly, but people seemed to be thinking about it more.
That interested me because nobody had made a big announcement about it.
There was no assembly telling students to pay more attention to their lunch waste. There was no major campaign. Students were simply seeing what happened after they left their trays behind.
When plastic ends up in the compost, it is easy to think of it as a small mistake. But the mistake does not disappear. Someone has to fix it, and a lot of the time that person is Todd.
Seeing that made the whole process feel more personal.
It is one thing to see signs telling you what goes in compost and what goes in trash. It is another thing to watch someone sort through the things people put in the wrong place.
The dining hall is also one of those places where a lot of work happens without students really noticing it. We walk in, food is ready, tables are cleaned, dishes disappear, and then we move on with our day. It is easy to forget that there are people behind all of those things.
Todd’s compost sorting is just one example.
And while separating one plastic wrapper might not seem like much, it does make his job a little easier. If more students take a few extra seconds before leaving their trays, there is less for him to sort through later.
Students still make mistakes, of course. Plastic still ends up in the compost.
But now I notice more people stopping before they throw something away.
Sometimes that pause is only a few seconds.
Still, it is a start.