With the growing need to be green, many dining halls on campus have, since October 2008, begun to join the growing trend of tray removal for sustainable purposes.

“We’ve reduced food waste in those dining rooms, which we’ve gauged to be about three ounces per person, on average,” said Karen Brown, director of campus life marketing and communications. A conspicuous absence of trays: Many dining halls throughout campus have opted to eliminate trays for sustainability purposes.

According to Richard Anderson, assistant director of dining services, many dining halls have maintained the trayless initiatives from last year including, Risley Dining, Okenshield’s except during dinnertime, and all the dining halls on West Campus aside from Alice Cook. However, trayless dining will be introduced to the Alice Cook Dining Room in January 2010 largely in part to the successful trayless initiations in the other dining halls.

“Removal of trays in the dining rooms where we’ve been able to do so has been extremely successful,” Brown said. “In addition, we’ve reduced the use of water by not having to wash trays, and we’ve saved on the energy required to heat the water to wash those trays.”

In fact, according to Anderson, employees at Risley are spared approximately 30 minutes of work after each meal since the trays were removed because they no longer need to wash and dry them.

According to Anderson, with the removal of trays, students are now more conscious of what kinds of food and how much of it they consume since excessive sampling is difficult without a tray. As a result, students are more carefully evaluating their food decisions, enabling them to eat more healthily.

Although trayless dining has resulted in many benefits for students, some find it to be more damaging than helpful.

“With no trays there will be more breakages and hence it will actually be less economically and environmentally friendly,” Elisabeth Steyn ’13 said.

Despite all the positive outcomes, trayless dining is not fit for all dining halls. According to administrators, the constraints of the dish collection equipment would make removing trays from places like the Robert Purcell Marketplace Eatery, North Star Dining Room and Alice Cook Dining Room difficult. “Robert Purcell Marketplace Eatery and North Star Dining Rooms have carousel returns that would make it difficult to accommodate trayless service,” Brown said. In the Alice Cook Dining Room, the dish return system consists of two parallel conveyor belts constructed especially for transporting trays. However, according to Anderson, Cornell Dining is looking at getting this system converted into a more trayless-friendly system. Details on possible designs for this system which is expected to go into effect this January are still up for discussion.

“[Trayless dining] means that the University is on the right track and means that the University is environmentally sound,” Colin Murphy ’12 said.

Cornell Dining continues to look for creative solutions to improve sustainability efforts. According to Brown, Cornell Dining is currently working with Cornell Farm Services to compost in the Ivy Room, Martha’s Café, Moosewood at Anabel Taylor, Synapsis Café, Mattin’s Café and Trillium. Also, about 20 percent of the food served in campus dining halls is from local, regional and New York State farmers and vendors in order to cut costs on transportation.

Additionally, according to Anderson, Cornell Dining has encouraged all dining halls to be more conscious of portion sizes. Dining staff are not filling pans to capacity with food to limit waste. Dining halls are also implementing “just-in-time” systems where dishes are made upon request, like at the Mongolian and burger grills. This, too, limits food waste by avoiding over-preparation.

On a smaller scale, the University encourages the re-use of insulated mugs by providing discount prices in many coffee shops.