Environmentalists Won't Clean Up Their Mess

Kevin Callahan cleans up the waste.

Charles has already written about the silliness behind the recent trayless day, in which a bunch of self-righteous students decided to making dining difficult for everyone.

In the picture, you'll see the ugly display they used for their cheap political stunt. The crusaders, of course, were too good to take it down themselves. That's why we pay people! (Hey wait, don't we pay for trays as well?)

Now the college students have been weighing our food waste for years, but they never measure the change over a long period of time. The only measure the change after one day of harassment--then they congradulate themselves for saving the world. And every year they do the same old ritual.

Another question that no one seems to ask is whether or not food waste is actually a problem, let alone if a handful of college students eating less will ever make a difference. And if it is a problem, would they consider a solution that actually might have an effect--like charging people for what they buy? Wait, but you can't do this because then people make bad choices, liking eating cheese and beef. Better for Emily and friends to make the decision for them.

And then you have the problem that actually occurs--no one comes to the dining hall! Did you notice how sparse it was inside? (Probably not, because you avoided the dining hall that night.) According to the numbers, the two nights saw a drop in people from 656 to 501. That's a 24% loss!

In terms of pounds of food per person wasted, the drop was entirely negligible (about 5%--which means the average person spared about an eighth of a chicken bone). So it's hard to say this was a success, unless you judge success in terms of chasing people away so they don't eat at all. Unfortunately for the crusaders, I suspect they just went to the other dining halls to avoid them.

Oh, well there is one way in which they were successful. They felt a lot better. And after all isn't that why we do good things. To make ourselves righteous and pure of heart. And we feel better when we make others follow along. It's okay, it's for your own good. You don't know better. We do. Trust us, the pizza is better without cheese.