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Most people don’t even realize it is a part of their school experience or a valuable part of some childhood memories until they are gone.  Now cafeterias and lunch halls across the country are cutting out a crucial part of the meal in an effort to save not only energy and money.

Lunch trays are disappearing in mess halls across the country.  No longer are kids going to have make shift sleds to steal after finishing a meal, as depicted in the popular movie Animal House.  The reason, going Green and saving Green in one swift movement.

The reason?  It is quite simple.  Trays have to be cleaned.  To clean them it requires an extensive amount of water and energy to run the machine and heat the water.   According to Sodexo spokeswoman Monica Zimmer the dining hall uses more than five times the amount of energy than any other part of a college campus.  She adds that if colleges are considering going green then they should begin with the dining hall.  That is exactly what they are doing.  By cutting out lunch trays dining halls are saving energy used to clean the trays as well as saving money on the actual expense of the trays and cost of the energy used to clean them.

Many schools, particularly colleges, are taking advantage of this new form of green thinking.  Aramark, a large nationwide company that manages hundreds of dining halls on campuses across the country, have gotten rid of trays in 60% of their dining halls.  This particular change is taking hold on other campuses, even independently ran dining halls.

There is also another benefit to cutting out trays, a health benefit.  A tray acts as a large plate that most students load up with an excess amount of food.  That excess food is either eaten, but most often thrown away and wasted.   Without a tray a person simply cannot carry as much food and quite possibly may eat less, or have greater portion awareness.  If people were to eat less in cafeterias or dining halls it may just help with the country’s obesity crisis, but if it does not at least the hopes are less food will be wasted.  Most students are skeptical and claim they will go back for second portions and site the lack of trays as more of an inconvenience than a green movement.

Below is a movie of several kids engaging in a well known past time of sledding using lunch trays, which may become a story of the past as nothing seems to escape the grasp of the green movement

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