It's no secret…Americans throw away a lot of trash-some 2,700 pounds per year per person by some estimates. The majority of this waste is packaging materials, the boxes, wrappers and fillers that serve little purpose but to carry the item that we really want. In the food service industry, "packaging" is the utensils, cups, plates, bowls, boxes, bags and wrappers made of plastic, Styrofoam, and plastic-coated paper. And despite the fact that around 70% of waste at most dining facilities is organic-and therefore fully compostable-disposable items contaminate the waste receptacles, making the entire lot unsuitable for composting.

How to deal with the waste problem of food service packaging is surprisingly complex. On the one hand, we want to be environmentally friendly. On the other, we demand the speed and convenience of take-out food-which we expect to come packaged in sturdy, clean material. No single solution exists that will suit the diverse needs of every eatery on campus; the high volume food-court venues clearly face different demands than do the smaller residential dining venues. With this in mind, we have divided our assessment into those two broad categories-residential and food court-style Below are some points to consider for each, followed by a condensed version of the presented suggestions.

M.I.T. is working to promote a friendly community atmosphere in its residential dining venues. The goal, according to the Campus Dining website, is that "you and your friends will be able to share meals and memorable times often under your own roof." When viewed in this context, discouraging the use of disposable dishes and utensils not only benefits the environment; it also promotes 'dining together' over take-out.

Bon Appétit, the food service provider operating Baker, Next, and Simmons, has made significant efforts to offer students an aesthetically pleasing dining experience. The use of stainless steel utensils and china dishware-often in fun, quirky shapes-go a long way towards creating the strived-for sense of homey-ness as well as towards cutting down on the amount of trash generated. Alongside the reusable items, however, there still a questionable abundance of plastic take-out boxes, disposable utensils, and individually packaged food items. We appreciate the fact that several students want their meals to go, so we aren't suggesting that these items be entirely phased out. They could, however, be less visibly displayed or made available upon request.

Making washable dishes the 'default' option appears to be an easy move, so we were curious as to why a such a quantity of disposables are still in use. Why, for instance, are most of the desserts offered in plastic boxes and only a few on china plates? We posed this question to Kathy Hanwell, the general manager of Bon Appétit, and were told the simple and sad truth: the reusable dishes were being stolen. The supply of half-moon shaped dessert dishes had dwindled from nearly a hundred at the beginning of the semester to only about half a dozen as of November. Unable to absorb the costs of this loss, Bon Appétit has begun to switch to disposable packaging for some items.

Clearly the problem of stealing is fully remediable only by the students themselves.

There are, however, some simple actions dining services might take to discourage the practice. One way is through raising awareness. People who take dishes/utensils from the dining hall may do so rather carelessly, unmindful to the repercussions of their actions. A well-designed, clearly displayed poster could underscore the efforts of dining services to promote environmentally sound practices, and emphasize the importance of student compliance to these efforts. Yes, inevitably some students will continue to think it is cool or funny to waltz out of the dining room with a coat-full of cutlery for their housemates, but just as many are likely to reconsider swiping that plate when they can appreciate it as part of a concerted campaign to "green" dining at M.I.T.

The on campus cafeterias and cafés have a very different atmosphere than the residential dining venues. These venues are only open during the day and therefore have many customers who are pressed for time. This prompts the on campus dining venues to focus on a "speedy service" approach to dining, which involves providing a lot of pre-packaged food. The trend towards speedy meals on campus is occurring in many universities around the country. In order to accommodate the fast paced schedule, retail operations are becoming a popular choice for campus dining. Understandably, this kind of dining generates a lot of waste in the form of plastic, paper, and Styrofoam materials. To address this issue some universities across the country are switching to biodegradable products (see biodegradable packaging)

Switching to biodegradables is a potential long-term strategy, but in the mean time there are many short-term initiatives that can be incorporated into the current dining scheme in order to reduce waste. Currently, customers that do not take out food still use pre-packaged and disposable items. In Walker for instance, all customers who want to have salad must choose from a limited amount of pre-packaged salads. Students have said that they prefer to use reusable dishware (see students' views) instead of disposables. In Lobdell, the option of reusable dishware is not available at some of the food stations (including the salad bar and the pizza station) and in Walker, all meals are served on disposable dishware. In Walker there seems to be a lack of staff to handle the extra labor that washing dishes would require. In Lobdell the salad bar does not offer reusable plates because of the weighing scheme that it uses to charge for the salad. (We've devised a high tech strategy to cope with this problem: substract the weight of the plate when calculating the price of the salad.) By using more creative strategies we believe that Lobdell can offer reusables at all its stations.

Serving condiments, drinks, snacks, and desserts in bulk is another way for these on campus dining venues to reduce their packaging waste. Both Lobdell and Walker already have soda fountains in place, and this setup can be expanded to include other drinks (such as juice and milk.) In many café type settings around the country, cookies and other dessert options are placed in dispensers. Such dispensers are already in use in Walker and some of the other cafés around campus (they usually hold donuts and pastries.) For little apparent reason, cookies and brownies are not included in these self-service dessert stations, and instead are individually wrapped in plastic.

The manager of Sodexho we spoke with offered economic reason for many of these practices. However, we feel that with a little innovatice thought these obstacles can easily be overcome. In Lobdell, for instance, cookies are packed in sets of three because this strategy makes more economic sense for the company (forcing people to by three cookies rather than only one). However, the company could serve cookies in bulk and simply charge the same price for one, two, or three cookies.

In focusing so intently on their take-out customers, these venues have not accommodated the significant numbers of people that dine on premises. In fact, the number of people eating in the cafeteria would probably increase if these establishments encouraged in-house dining.

The food packaging items currently in use in MIT dining venues are generally petroleum-based.

These plastics, Styrofoams, and plastic-coated papers are costly to the environment all along their life cycles-at the level of fossil fuel extraction, transportation, and disposal in landfills/incinerators. In recent years, a small number of innovative companies, such as Earthshell and Biocorp, have begun market-testing new, "greener" alternatives to traditional packaging. The materials, mostly comprised of potato starch and limestone, mimic the characteristics of traditional plastics, but are fully biodegradable in compost piles and landfills.

Currently the high price of these biodegradable goods-on average about 50% more than regular disposables-makes them economically unfeasible as an option for MIT. But we would like to encourage dining services and EPTF to actively pursue business negotiations with a biodegradables manufacturer. Due to the small market, many of these companies are financially struggling to stay alive-they would seemingly jump at the chance to ally themselves with a prestigious and influential institution such as MIT.

A handful of other schools of comparable size to MIT have experimented with biodegradable packaging in their dining facilities. In October of 2001, Oregon State University began offering Earthshell plates and bowls in three campus food venues; they are now planning add to the list a fully biodegradable cup. In 1998, Oberlin College switched to reSourceWare utensils: biodegradable forks, knives, and spoons made mostly of cornstarch. MIT should communicate with the dining programs at these institutions to learn how they have managed to successfully incorporate biodegradables into their systems.

*The Pictures in this biodegradable section were obtained from the Biocorp and Earthshell websties