Monday April 1 1858-1920
Athlete dining waste - observed around 50 people
Over my period of observation, during a busy dinner time at the athlete dining hall, I noticed that most people are very quick to clear their plates and move away. These people generally have very little food waste on their dishes and put it all in one bin - some people put it all in landfill or compost despite there being two types of bins available.
There are some people who spend more time clearing their plates, but most of these people are focusing on not dropping whatever is in their hands (i.e. phones, water bottles). People that spend more time do generally seem to have more food to clear. In rare examples, people had a variety of types of waste and sorted them into the correct bins, or attempted to. The time taken is added to by the cramped layout of the bins as seen in the photos. This is the only clearing station in a dining hall that serves up to 984 student-athletes every meal.
Overall, people take care in the sorting of dishes and cutlery by the signs put out by staff, indicating that people care about making the jobs of RD&E workers. This could be taken advantage of in changing behaviours as generally students know the workers as both the workers and the students consistently go to this dining hall.
Another change that could be made easily would be to physically separate the compost and landfill bins. I have seen this in other dining halls recently and it seems to make people more intentional about their waste sorting.