By: Matthew Du, Staff Writer

At Mills High School, food waste has become a problem as most foods end up in the trash rather than being consumed. What is the main issue that is causing food waste? Is it the quality of the food? How can they improve food waste and prevent it from happening? 

One of the main issues contributing to food waste at Mills is the food quality. Most of the time students will throw away their food because the food is unappetizing and unappealing. While most foods are decent, some are good, and then most of them are either mediocre or pretty terrible. 

While I was at center court during lunch, my friend, Ethan Wong (9)  told me that “the fried chicken was dry as a rock.” When fried chicken is described as “dry as a rock”, it isn’t good since it is hard to chew. When the inside of the fried chicken is dry, there’s no juice in it. Fried chicken is meant to be enjoyed crispy, tender, and juicy. 

If the food was better and more appetizing, more and more people would eat the food rather than throwing it away in the trash and wasting the food. If we want to avoid food waste, the food quality should be improved. Food quality is their number one priority that should be fixed. You want to be able to make food that is enjoyable and desirable for the students that students will eat. 

Food is being wasted because some students may not think about the environmental factors that could take place. They should be more considerate and more concerned about food waste. Food waste is bad for the environment because it contributes to climate change. 

Biology and AP Environmental Science (APES) teacher, Mike DeBois said, “I noticed that a lot of students don’t know how to use the composting system. If we use the composting system as far as climate change is concerned, that would be okay.” 

He also noted that students would either throw their food away in the landfill or the recycling, which is the wrong bin. DeBois also observed that after lunch most of the time, seagulls would fly in and eat the food they left behind at Center Court. 

DeBois explained further, “So the big issue is that when food waste gets put into landfills what ends up happening is that the food gets buried and then bacteria decomposes it. It’s not a problem because that happens to nature all the time. The problem is that because it’s being done in an oxygen-free environment, what it ends up producing is methane, and methane is 23 or 25 times stronger than CO2.” 

He adds, “So when you put food waste into a landfill, you end up contributing so much to climate change, just because of the sheer amount of methane that you put out. But if you were to compost, it totally takes that away.” 

Some students may not realize the downsides of food waste because there are some countries where people are too poor to afford to buy food and eat. They barely have enough and have little to no food at all. They go days without food and starve from hunger while even some have died from food starvation. 

Students should get what they are going to eat. If they don’t feel like eating it, they shouldn’t grab food, but should consider saving it for later as a snack when they’re hungry after school. They could’ve used the food that they wasted to feed the homeless or the poor instead of going to waste. That would have helped positively contribute to the community and the needy. 

When students get pizza for lunch, a bag of carrots comes with the pizza and rarely does anybody like to eat raw carrots. I believe that when they give out pizza for lunch, they should ask the student whether or not they want carrots because if they don’t like carrots and aren’t going to eat them, it will just end up either in the trash or the compost. Another way they could fix this problem is not give carrots to students at all. That eliminates the food waste. 

Dean of Students Tim Christian commented on the matter stating, “What I think has happened is that if you had to pay for what you wanted to eat, you would be more respectful for what you were going to take and it would matter to you…They lack gratitude and a lack of appreciation.” 

Let’s make the school a better place by eliminating all the food waste and taking only the foods we will eat. This not only helps cut down on the landfill, but it will also help protect the environment from greenhouse gases and climate change. We shall educate the students the importance of reducing food waste and making Mills a better place.