If you have been up to the Houghton cafeteria recently, you will have noticed the abundance of various sized plates, bowls, troughs, and other miscellaneous dishes. You will have also likely received a food portion with which you felt mildly disturbed after receiving. Asking yourself, “Is this enough food to survive?” and answering yourself with “No, I think I will go quest for some more.” Requiring you to further your collection of dishes.
Before any of us current students came to Houghton, trays were removed from the dining hall to save the thousands of gallons of water it took to wash them. An admirable move for the environment, yes, but one that, it seems, has been called into question recently as we have more choices on bowl and plates sizes than anything else in the cafeteria.
I, and I believe others, have been selfishly wishing for those trays that we have never used for anything more than sledding in recent history. I know I shouldn’t want them, because they are wasteful, but at the same time we are left with little choice but to make multiple laps around the cafeteria to find a sufficient meal on multiple types of food storage devices.
A concerning and recent development this year, related to plates, is the large ones are all but retired. This further worsens the problem, because we are not given the option to have only one plate. Unless you are eating a pigeon-sized portion on a small plate, you will want another plate, maybe even a third. Besides that, some students have even complained that the new small plates are not large enough to keep food on and make a mess at the table.
Before you know it you have one small plate, a trough, a square bowl, one or two cups (maybe four), and silverware all to carry with you. Chances are, you can’t do it all in one trip and you might even be up later for seconds.
Sometimes I find myself receiving a food item in a plate/bowl/trough, immediately transferring it to another food platform, and then proceeding to place the (basically untouched) plate/bowl/trough on the conveyor belt to be swallowed up into the bowels of the wash room, where I know water will be wasted on the item. All done to reduce the amount of plates to carry and place on my table.
One solution for the abundance of dishes could be to bring back trays, yes. However, I am not advocating for this as I think a main point here is to reduce water usage and that would simply do the opposite.
Therefore, I believe a better solution would be to bring back large plates and reduce all the miscellaneous sized plates, bowls, and troughs to a manageable amount. I don’t really care if my stuffed shells are in a fancy oval shaped bowl, or scooped onto my plate by a friendly worker. Likewise, as wonderful as it is to have my burger resting in a nest of curly fries in a trough-shaped dish, divided on my large plate is also acceptable. If we want to get food from the allergen free area, how about we start with a large plate so we have the option of going to another station.
I understand many of these dishes have already been purchased, but perhaps we can work on reducing the complication of too many dish sizes in the future. We could simply have large plates, one type of bowl, cups, and silverware. If we are feeling fancy, maybe keep one alternative sized plate and the glass ice-cream cups.
Finally, If we can get back to this more simple dining hall experience maybe we can stop the dish balancing act many of us play and reduce the amount of water wasted to wash all those dishes.