As two students deeply involved with campus environmental initiatives, however, we wish to correct inaccuracies and confront overgeneralizations and mischaracterizations of the University’s commitment to the environment.
Halenda called the recently piloted trayless dining initiative Greening Princeton’s “most fatuous plan yet.” Though the Daily Princetonian Editorial Board has already lauded the benefits of trayless dining, we again dispute Halenda’s claim that it’s “overall reductive benefit — which is most likely small at best — is hard to quantify from studying a few random dinners.”
Greening Princeton has hardly been careless in studying the effects of trayless dining. The group did not, as Halenda claims, study “random dinners.” In fact, it conducted a controlled experiment by measuring food waste, water, steam and electricity usage for the exact same menu both with and without trays. Greening Princeton also gathered feedback — both positive and negative — at the March 24 pilot in hopes that the feedback will help the group overcome logistical and customer issues inherent in changing the dining hall setup.
Moreover, experience from other universities suggests that this is not simply a “publicity stunt,” but rather a well-documented means to save resources. A July 2008 study of 186,000 meals at 25 colleges and universities found a 25 to 30 percent reduction in food waste per person on trayless days. The same study found that the University of Maine at Farmington — an institution with only a third as many students as Princeton — reduced overall food waste by 65,000 pounds (or 46 pounds per person), conserved 288,288 gallons of water and reduced operating costs by $57,000 in the first year of switching to trayless dining. Piloting trayless dining at Princeton represents an intelligent risk given these potential rewards.
Halenda offered a more interesting point for debate when he asserted that “the greatest flaw in this new proposal is its utter inessentiality and its dependence on the ‘green’ movement’s strategy of imposing uncommonly shared ideas onto everyone.” We would like to address two arguments he presented in this statement, namely that many “green” ideas are novel, untested and perhaps ineffective, and that environmental paternalism is an infringement on personal rights.
To the first point: Many sustainability initiatives are indeed “uncommonly shared ideas.” If they were commonly shared, they would probably have been implemented long ago. But the mere fact that an idea is not yet widely accepted does not mean that it is flawed. Taking lead out of gasoline and converting used cooking oil into biodiesel are each examples of “green” ideas that at one point were obscure but have demonstrated their environmental value over time. For society in general and the University in particular, innovation is necessary for progress.
To the second point: The charge of paternalism depends on your frame of reference. Instead of asking “Why no trays?” Halenda could also ask himself “Why trays at all?” The use of a tray in the dining hall is not a necessity. It is a convenience for the diner, but this convenience comes at a significant environmental cost. In a similar vein, dumping toxic waste in a nearby river might be a convenience for a factory owner, but as a society, we choose not to allow such an action. Using a tray and dumping toxic waste are by no means equivalent, but out of respect for our planet and its inhabitants and out of economic prudence, we sometimes have to forgo conveniences we might like to enjoy.
The last point to which we object is Halenda’s claim that “Princeton’s administration and the ‘green’ progressives on campus … pursue efforts that are only viscerally ‘green’ in a quest for good publicity and political correctness — but, in reality, such initiatives are usually costly and highly flawed in their conception.” In making this assertion, Halenda overgeneralizes from opposing a specific initiative — trayless dining — to opposing the entire array of environmental initiatives at Princeton.
The University has implemented innovative sustainability projects with admirable attention to economic value and practicality. These range from small changes in maintenance practices to the installation of a cogeneration plant. Each of these has reduced the University’s impact on the environment and its operating cost. Ted Borer, the campus energy plant manager, said that the University is now working on a project to capture excess heat in the plant that will reduce the carbon dioxide produced by 5,200 tons per year. At a price of $2.7 million, the project should pay for itself in less than three years.
The introduction of trayless dining marks another opportunity for the University to reduce its environmental impact while reducing costs at the same time. As Princeton has understood in the past, changes made for the sake of environmentalism need to be pragmatic to fully succeed. Trayless dining represents just such a change.
Henry Barmeier is a Wilson School major from Saratoga, Calif. Brooks Barron is a sophomore from Boulder, Colo. They can be reached individually at barmeier@princeton.edu and bbarron@princeton.edu.
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