Students for Clean Plates to protest
Jackie Ostrowski
News Writer
In an effort to create student awareness about the amount of wasted food at Notre Dame and throughout the world, a group called Students for Clean Plates will be sponsoring a dining hall protest on Thursday.
Students for Clean Plates will distribute flyers in the dining halls during the week to coincide with the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness Week.
The group will host a mealtime demonstration to show the student body how much food they waste daily. Students will be asked to scrape their uneaten food into a trash dumpster to remind them that every item they leave on their tray will be thrown away.
"The dining halls are set up in a way that makes it very easy to waste food without thinking," said Rene Mulligan, who coordinated the week's events with Ramin Skibba. She noted that students could use their experience at the Notre Dame demonstration to relate to the situation in the rest of the world.
Just as Notre Dame students leave edible, untouched food on their trays, many well-fed Americans, used to an abundance of everything, do the same.
"It's important to start at home," said Mulligan. "It is very obvious that we can do something to make a difference by not wasting food."
This project is the first major undertaking for the Students for Clean Plates. The group began in September as a combination of two other student groups — Students for Environmental Action and the World Hunger Coalition — and has since become its own organization. To recruit members, Mulligan and Skibba also contacted all presidents of campus clubs that might be interested in such a cause.
Though Students For Clean Plates is a relatively young organization, Mulligan said its current campaign against food wasting sends a powerful message reminding students of the less fortunate world outside Notre Dame.
"No food should go to waste when people are hungry," she said.
All News Stories for Tuesday, November 16, 1999
