By Evan Zhang ‘26

Content note: This article contains several images of food waste that some readers may find “gross.”

Three weeks ago, I was sitting in the crowded Upper School library for a senior class meeting led by faculty members Erin Gilmore and Tyler Reuter. The two were leading a presentation centered around stewardship within the student body.

Afterward, all seniors, including myself, were asked to form small groups to brainstorm what being a steward looks, sounds, and feels like. A frequent idea that was brought up in my group was cleaning up our messes and the messes of others. As we discussed, I reflected on an ongoing stewardship issue that I had witnessed growing with frequency: unsustainable food habits.

Since the start of the year, the abandonment of empty plates, half-filled cups, and stained cutlery on tables across the Upper School well past lunchtime has become commonplace. By itself, this behavior creates unnecessary clutter and extra labor for facilities workers. As days pass, these missing items can accumulate, eventually depleting the stock of such supplies in the Barn.

*Lunch scraps left behind in the North Dant Lounges.*
*Photos by John Harnetiaux.*

Chef Manager Kirsten Wenzel, who oversees the Barn, spoke about the difficulties she and the staff have faced as a result of unreturned dishware. “The biggest challenge is that, with cutlery…if they don’t come back, we have to transition to plastic, which is not what anybody wishes to use,” she explained.

Additionally, the longer a dish has been left out, the more effort is required to scrub it down. In these situations, as Wenzel elaborates, “they’re caked over with food that’s been crusted there for so long. It takes more time to clean, and that’s what is the problem.”

Furthermore, although bus tubs and carts can usually be found in each of the four Barn receptacles spread around the campus, the bins are collected by students performing Barn Duty towards the end of the lunch block; consequently, when bins are returned early, students who finish eating late wind up placing their dirty dishes and silverware on the roof of these receptacles instead.

While seemingly harmless, this behavior tends to attract wild animals, including crows and squirrels, and poses potentially detrimental consequences to local ecosystems.

According to the National Park Service, repeated consumption leads wildlife to develop an unhealthy dependence on human food, a phenomenon known as “food conditioning.” Gradually, animals may stop searching for adequate, nutritious foods found in nature in lieu of man-made products. In the long-term, food conditioning can result in sickness, malnutrition, and aggression towards humans—all potential side effects of discarded meals.

*The interior of a trash can marked “Landfill” outside of the ML building.*
*Photo by Evan Zhang ‘26.*

Another harmful aspect of meal-related student behavior is a lack of proper composting habits. As stated by the school’s official website, the Upper School Environmental Action Team (EAT) has been working on an initiative to standardize the systems of recycling and trash collection, and has already successfully re-implemented a composting program in the Barn. Nevertheless, the insides of campus garbage cans are often covered with the residue of food waste, as shown above.

Atharva Deepak ‘27, the CGSA Sustainability Coordinator and a current junior, observed that with certain eco-friendly tasks like recycling that require extra steps to accomplish, individuals often choose the easier route. “90% of people are not going to lift up that [recycling] lid. They’re just going to throw it into the trash,” he remarked.

Past projects of the EAT have also sought to incorporate sustainability into students’ diets and waste management. One such project was “Meatless Mondays,” a now-defunct initiative that aimed to promote climate-conscious vegetarian dining; as the name suggests, every Monday, the Barn would offer only vegetarian meal options.

Unfortunately, Meatless Mondays were discontinued at the start of the 2022-23 academic year, with little notice from the school as to why. Other efforts, such as student-led recycling, C&C recycling, and cafeteria plastic bottle removal, met their eventual ends as well.

On the other hand, Barn composting is still in place, albeit to a limited degree of success. After all, it is up to students to comply with the established standards of food disposal. So far, the issue of compostable scraps winding up in the trash persists.

A third, popular topic of discussion when it comes to dining is Barn Lunch Duty. While Wenzel notes that this year’s attendance has generally been solid across C&Cs, some students’ cleaning attempts are lackluster. “Don’t push around the broom and just miss, you know, 75% of [the crumbs],” she advised, highlighting areas for improvement.

John Harnetiaux, the Upper School Dean of Students, has heard the number of complaints from students about Barn Duty increase in recent years. He attributes the change in student culture to the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted existing sustainability efforts. “We became a bit more individualistic and insular during the pandemic,” he commented.

In the pre-pandemic era, a large number of students also ate in the Barn alongside faculty members as opposed to eating outside or in other buildings. Practically speaking, this made returning plates and composting highly convenient. On a deeper level, the arrangement fostered a strong sense of community, which Harnetiaux thinks “atrophied a little bit” in the pandemic’s aftermath.

Deepak has noticed this cultural shift as well, where “people are more dismissive of not just taking care of others, but…taking care of themselves.” Alongside Harnetiaux, Deepak is workshopping potential solutions to raise awareness and encourage stronger adherence to stewardship.

For the time being, the pair is in the brainstorming process. One of their ideas has been to establish a campus clean-up crew, which would function as a volunteer student organization that collects and returns leftover dishes at the end of each school day. However, this strategy has its drawbacks, as Harnetiaux worries that it may instead “enable worse behavior” instead of motivating students to take personal accountability.

Another strategy would be to designate a daily block of time for teachers to lead their classes in tidying up their surroundings.

This system was in place prior to the pandemic, and the entire clean-up process would last two to three minutes. “It didn't last very long because it was cutting into class time,” Harnetiaux recalled, describing a disadvantage of this approach. That said, he hopes to work out the logistics of this or a similar activity in the schedule for next year.

A final option is to require that all Upper Schoolers eat in the Barn, a simpler ultimatum that Harnetiaux believes the student body is not ready for. Though the solution ensures greater usage of dish tubs and composting bins, he is wary of the adverse effects it would have on students who already follow the rules, as they too would no longer be permitted to eat elsewhere. Moreover, the Barn has limited seating that likely would not accommodate over 300 students, making this proposal less viable than the other two.

Regarding Barn Duty, Deepak suggests that C&C’s plan out how to most efficiently complete their designated tasks ahead of time. “It’s an organized operation, and I bet you that if every C&C…assigns simple roles, the task will be done simply,” he asserted. Wenzel agrees, citing the need for students to focus on the quality of their work.

Evidently, resolving the question of stewardship is a daunting task, with a multitude of administrative plans in the works but none currently set in stone.

Nonetheless, Wenzel emphasizes the power of independent participation in contributing to stewardship as a whole. This responsibility presents itself in many forms—placing plates in bus tubs, fully engaging during Barn Duty, and developing greater self-awareness. “If everyone individually can just consciously make the effort…then we will have all of our resources to make sure that you guys have everything you need.”

Stewardship, sustainability, and the dilemma of dirty dishes on campus