To All the Students in Syracuse University:

I suppose that all of you who are visiting this Green University website are caring about the sustainability of our university. We do have lots of problems about recycling and other environmental issues, but there is one of them that definitely needs our attention. That is food waste.

I don’t know if all of you notice this problem, but being a student in Syracuse University for almost two years, I notice that every dinning hall throws gallons of food everyday. Who causes this problem? With no doubt, we are the participants. Do you still remember that when you use your Meal Plan in the dinning halls that you are always trying to take more food? Because you want your money to be worthy for the food you take; in other word, you don’t want to waste your money. However, it turns out that you usually can not eat all the things that you take, so you have to throw them away. Because of this attitude, we are wasting more food everyday than we thought.

Does this food waste have a bad impact to our university? Yes, it is. Our carbon foot print will be increased when we transport more food to our university, and it will be also increased when we waste too much food. Even when a waste management company comes here to help us to deal with the wasted food, our carbon foot print will still be increased. What’s more, the wasted food can also increase the carbon dioxide in the environment. On the other hand, you may think that world hunger is too far away from you. Nonetheless, there are still a lot of people in the East Syracuse are struggling with hunger. As a member of Syracuse University, as a member of Syracuse community, we have the responsibility to stop food waste and to help those people who are in hunger. If we stop the food waste, we actually save more resources for those people who are in hunger and we also provide more possibilities for them to get rid of huger as well. If we stop the food waste, we can help our university to reduce the carbon foot print and to reduce the carbon dioxide in our environment.

In order to stop this food waste, I think to replace the Meal Plan with SUperfood card is a good way to go. This action can actually benefit us. I believe that many of you find out that you usually can not use all of your meals by the end of each semester, especially for freshman. From this point of view, you are wasting your money and the food at the same time by using Meal Plan. However, if you use SUperfood card, you only pay what you get. You can also add money whenever you want. It is more flexible than Meal Plan. Thus, on the one hand, you won’t waste your money; on the other hand, you won’t take more food beyond your needs, which can help our university to stop food waste and to reduce our carbon foot print.

As a Chinese, I learned to save food and only get what I want when I was little. I think it is a good habit that we all should have. Stop wasting food is to respect the farmers who are making them. Stop wasting food is a little effort to help our community to save resources and to help those people who are in hunger. However, only my own power is not enough, I encourage all of you to join with me in this action: saving food by using SUperfood card. Using SUperfood card, we can benefit ourselves. Using SUperfood card, we can help our university to turn to be a Green University. Using SUperfood card, we can also help Syracuse community to solve the hunger problem.

Start today, join with me, let’s make an action!