Problem: AGU students who eat in the university’s dinner hall are taking meals which they can’t finish all of them or they don’t want to eat. Therefore ending up wasting food.

Survey results: 41.6% of the students waste the food because they simply don’t like them. 37% think that the food is not cooked well. And the remaining students have mixed opinions like they think the portions are too big or they are spicy/salty or they are eating the food before they are hungry. We have also conducted this research to find out what are the most wasted foods. The most wasted meal is the main meal by 58% percent followed by rice (41%) and soup with 37%.

Model Solution: Our BAT group’s solutions for the food wasting in the university’s dinner hall are as following:

1.Food providers can be changed, so menu and also the taste of the foods change. From the survey results it is certain that most of the students are wasting their meals because they don’t like their tastes. Given to the fact that Kayseri is a big city and there will probably be better food providers around the city it shouldn’t be hard to find a provider which students actually like eating from. It will also help to refresh the mood around the university where for years eating the same types of food. Therefore, both students and environment will get benefited from this solution.

2. Just the menu alone can be changed by analysing what students are wasting the most. How this plan will work is that in each week, the food serving crew should be interrogated. They are the ones who are washing the dishes, taking up the leftovers and unloading the wasted food so they will be aware of what is being wasted the most. Each week the crew will detect a most wasted food and in next week that food type will be replaced with another type of food and the research will go on. It is expected that within a year we will be able to determine the exact food combination which minimizes the wasted food. This method requires less work and resources from the first one but it will not bring the same amount of refreshment which comes with the first method. 

3. The default portions will get smaller and bigger portions will be given to the ones who requested. This method has been planned again by taking the survey results into consideration. While some people think that the given portions are not enough, there are also people who think the opposite. None of them can be claimed to be wrong. It is about their desires and capabilities. Therefore, we designed this simple solution to leave the decision into students whether they want the previous “big” sized portions or the new small ones. Actually, the students are able to switch to a smaller portion by talking with the food serving crew. But in reality most of the students are being timid to express themselves. For that, the crew can intentionally prepare small and big portions together to leave the decision to the students or an informing paper can be hanged somewhere in the dining hall to inform students that they can decide the size of the portions. 

Another way to arrange the portions is self-service. In this way everyone gets the amount of food that they are capable to finish. This solution also requires less people in the serving crew and by making the students decide and prepare their portions therefore making the students will be more pleased with the “IKEA effect”. The problem with this method is that there should be a crew to check if the students are taking more food than they should and it shouldn’t be ignored that there will be students who will try to break the limits. Therefore serving for the exact opposite purpose by increasing the waste.

4. The wasted food will be sent to feed the street animals. Whatever we try, there will be always some waste. This method is the addition for all the methods above to make use of the wasted food while taking care of the street animals. 

I this week I want to give some interesting numerical facts about the food waste to show how serious the problem really is.

• More than 1/3 of the produced food is being wasted.
• Every year, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted in the world. Its estimated value is $1 trillion globally.
• With less than a quarter of the food wasted in US ,UK and Europe, one billion hungry people could have been fed.

• A quarter of the world’s potable water and an area that is bigger than China are being used just for the wasted, non-eaten food.
• The wasted food results in 4.4 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. If that much gas emissions were made in a country, that country would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
• Throwing away a burger and taking a 90 minute shower wastes the same amount of water.

References:

https://www.ozharvest.org/what-we-do/environment-facts/

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/environment/food-waste-third-largest-gas-emitter/1633419

https://olioex.com/food-waste/food-waste-facts/

Food Waste Facts

In this week’s post I will give some helpful recommendations to decrease the food waste.

• Think carefully while you are shopping for food. Before you buy any amount of food, you should first have a plan about how much of it you will eat or use in something. You should never buy more than needed.

• Find your ideal portion. You should find your ideal portion by taking care of your diet. That way you will be able to maintain a healthier life while taking care of the environment.

• Think of ways to use the leftovers. The fact is most of the leftovers can be used in the preparation of another food. For example you can crush the leftover breads to use it inside of meatballs.
• Store your food carefully. It is certain that so much food is wasted just because they are not stored responsibly. Find the best way to store your each type of food.

Our BAT topic was about the ecological footprint caused by our eating habits. For our first presentation in the class, we have researched about it a little bit. The problem is the greenhouse gas emissions from not just cooking the food but from its production process. We searched in the web to find what types of food is causing the most carbon emission and found out that the meats such as beef and lamb and dairy products require the most carbon gas to be produced. So with that in mind I analysed what we are eating for a while and I think we are not that bad in what we choose to eat. We are mostly eating carbohydrates such as pasta and bread with seasonal fruits and vegetables. Our worst habit is that we sometimes order food and when we do order, we are mostly eating meat based foods such as chicken wrap. Also we are using dairy products such as eggs or butter in the preparation of our meals. In the weekdays we are eating our lunch at school. In school there is always -along with the vegetables and a meatless meal- a meal with meat in it. 

Within a week I can be more careful about my electrical devices such as my laptop. With that I will be able to save money and environment at the same time!

We are sometimes leaving the lights on while we are not studying so I can turn off the lights when I don’t need them. Doing this will also reduce the light pollution. Therefore, it will be helpful for the light sensitive creatures.

We are now in winter so we turn up the heat from our combi but the weather is not always that cold so we (me and my housemates) can reduce the usage of the natural gas too.

 Also I can be more careful about what I eat. From what I have seen from the web, among the other types of food, in production, the most carbon dioxide requiring food is meat. So from now on, I will think twice before I eat meat again.

In this post, I want to explain the vegetarian mindset. I will also try to answer why they choose vegetables over meat and what does eating meat having to do with reducing the carbon footprint.

Meat is a choice of food of humans since prehistoric times. It is being gathered by hunting down the animals such as chickens, sheep and cows. Scientists think that along with the diet with its high protein rate and essential nutrients, meat played a big role in the development of human intelligence.

But nowadays it is being controversial to eat meat because it is being claimed that meat is damaging the environment. Because of this, many people are converting into being vegetarian or vegan. Vegetarians and vegans state that humans can still satisfy their protein and nutrient needs with just eating vegetables. They claim that eating meat for its protein is very inefficient because we are taking that protein from an animal which got its protein from the plants it ate.

With that in mind, I want to turn back into my original topic. When we look which types of food require the most carbon dioxide to become ready to be consumed, we see that meat is the most carbon dioxide requiring food. Therefore it is leaving a much bigger carbon footprint into our world than other food types. So my main point is that people should be aware that meat can and should be replaced with vegetables if they want to take care of the environment. Thank you for reading.