Earlier this month, a visual installation in the Students Center confronted students with their wasteful consumption and challenged UCL’s dysfunctional food system.
The installation was made by members of the Zero Food Waste project, who collect and redistribute left-over food from campus cafes and shops to charities across London.
Students could see two sculptures made of food packaging; one representing the average amount of food redistributed each week, and another showing the amount of food that goes to waste because of limited manpower.
This installation was part of the larger ‘28 Days of Sustainability’ initiative running from 17 February to 18 March. The “month-long festival of sustainability action and learning” – as described on UCL’s website – was run by Sustainability Engagement Officer Dan Hall and aimed to raise climate awareness across the student body.
Zero Food Waste took this opportunity to highlight their cause. “Right now it’s treated as out of sight, out of mind, so we brought the waste to the Student Centre to show everyone that this is the problem that should be solved,” said Chan.
The initiative originally began six years ago to combat the enormous amounts of food waste at UCL. It continues to be run on the backs of just three student volunteers.
Carson Chan, project lead of Zero Food Waste, spoke to The Cheese Grater about the University’s lack of support for the project, noting that “they fail to provide adequate support” for their operation.
He urged UCL to take initiative “instead of having the three of us run around trying to collect the food waste,” adding: “UCL places the entire burden of their mission on us.”
Volunteers have observed that many catered events on campus would see large quantities of leftover food with over 250 sandwiches wasted in some occasions.
Despite the lack of University support for the initiative, Chan thanked Food at UCL for their help in collecting and transporting food from these events.
Savina Hui, one of the three volunteers running Zero Food Waste, explained that “really low manpower” due to lack of exposure remains the project’s main concern.
Chan alleged UCL has failed to provide exposure to this important cause, despite a commitment to “empower all members of our community to do their part’” on its website.
“We get the same or even less promotion opportunities as other student-led projects,” Chan said.
Hui agreed that additional exposure would make a large difference in their initiative, saying that they “just don’t have enough volunteers to collect all of the food waste.”
Hui also urged students to take responsibility for their own consumption, saying that “since we expect there to be food for us to eat, we should also have to deal with the food when we don’t need it.”
The group plans to create a shared fridge on campus where students struggling with food insecurity can access meals for free. This fridge will also act as a disposal point for all of the remaining sandwiches.
A UCL spokesperson said: “We recognise our important role in promoting healthy and sustainable food production and consumption. With the benefit of our purchasing power, we only work with suppliers who are committed to continually improving sustainability and minimising food waste.
“Our main catering and hospitality service, Gather&Gather, conducts annual customer plate-waste surveys and works closely with the UCL student-run Zero Food Waste project volunteers, alerting them regularly about which of our campus coffee shops have waste food for collection.
“Across UCL all other remaining food waste is disposed of through anaerobic digestion, through composting or energy recovery and no waste is sent to landfill.”
Correction: This article was amended on 25/03 at 16:42 to remove an inaccurate claim that most of the University’s food waste came from the Union’s Bloomsbury Shop and catered events.
