Waste Not, Want Not
restaurants to donate leftover food (Irgang, 2009). In fact, after an eleven-year old student in south Florida noticed the amount of food his school wasted, he contacted the state legislators and helped pass the Jack Davis Florida Restaurant Lending a Helping Hand Act in 2008. State Senator Jenny Oropeza, who introduced a similar bill in California that same year, stated, “There simply is too much perfectly good food being wasted. Sadly, too many people are struggling financially and going to bed hungry” (Irgang, 2009, para. 10). These new laws have been passed around the country over the years, and more states are joining in because they see the correlation between a need for more donations and a large amount of wasted food at restaurants. Along with poverty and the economy, environmental protection is also a hot topic in the country today. From an environmental standpoint, there are a lot of solutions that involve unusable waste. Some of the food left on people’s plates can be put towards composts instead of going straight to the trash. Any plastic products can be recycled. ASU prides itself on being a sustainable, green university; all the plates and silverware in the cafeteria are reusable, and this year they made a switch from Styrofoam to-go boxes to reusable plastic boxes. These are great steps towards improving the environment that we live, but now it is time to turn the attention to the people that live here. Donating food can be considered green as well. According to The New York Times article, “One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal,” only a few studies have been done in food waste, but a study run by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of waste each year and all but roughly two percent of that waste goes to landfills (Martin, 2008). Furthermore, the rotting food that ends up in landfills produce methane, a major source of greenhouse gases. Much of the food is thrown away is not just scraps, it is edible food, which means that if more was salvaged for donations, in the long run, it could reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills and in turn reduce the amount of methane produced. If the amount of poverty in the Valley and the rise in necessity at food banks is not convincing enough, maybe this green standpoint is just what this issue needs in order for ASU to pay attention. Of course, in order for this to happen, the first step needs to be awareness. All it takes is asking the right questions in order to get people to start thinking about the issue and the benefits that could come from donating for both charities and the school. According to a study by Tarasuk and Eakin (2005), “The work of salvaging edible foodstuffs from among industry ‘surplus’ helps to ‘feed the hungry’ while also diminishing the amount of refuse deposited in landfill sites, sparing corporations disposal costs and landfill tipping fees, and helping them forge an image of good corporate citizenship.” Along with the environmental factors, building a stronger relationship with food banks could be good for the school’s image and reputation. ASU Downtown is always looking for new ways to get involved with the community and a partnership with food banks or other organizations would be 128