Our team wants to decrease food waste in UCLA dining establishments by educating students and staff on current food waste issues on campus and how to change current food waste levels. Our motive for doing so is to try to change the mindset regarding food waste with the main issue being that it is on the post-consumer side rather than the preparation side. In addition, we are interested in the behavioral changes that go along with further awareness regarding this topic. In order to accomplish this we have outlined a few different programs. The first step in our research was to collect data on demographic trends among dining patrons at two locations on campus and compare this to the amount of food that was wasted by each diner. In doing so we found there to be noticeably more food waste amongst patrons who had no dietary preferences, no allergies, got all of their food at the beginning of the meal and those who thought food waste was a bigger issue on the consumption side than the production side. We also elected to facilitate focus groups amongst students living in the dorms in order to gauge their perception of the issue of food waste on campus. With these meetings, we also sought to evaluate responses to three styles of signage media; humor, statistics and visual appeal. There is a lot of support to combat food waste on campus, but the biggest hurdle has been educating students and staff so that the necessary changes can be focused on and this the core issue that we seek to address with these results.
Stakeholder: Emma Sorrell
Leaders: Eric Witiw and Danna Creager
Members: Sabrina Theocharides, Alison Chi, Jocelyn Garcia, Destiny Johnson