24. Whitepaper on Trayless Dining
ARAMARK has published a whitepaper entitled, "The Business and Cultural Acceptance Case for Trayless Dining." The paper lists reasons for considering, the cultural shift in accepting, and the business case for tray removal. The publication also provides best practices and gives case studies for the University of Maine at Farmington and Grand Valley State University (MI). In related news, the USA Today has published an article on how colleges and universities are going trayless. The article reports that some campuses have seen food waste reductions of up to 50 percent by removing trays from cafeterias. New York University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Florida were mentioned in the article for their recent tray-removal initiatives.
See also: USA Today Covers Trayless Dining

St. Paul's School in Concord, NH has completely eliminated the use of
trays. In 30 weeks of trayless we saved:

177,500 glasses, or 11,093 gallons, of beverages
20,700 eggs (1725 dozen)
12,900 bowls of cereal (86 cases)
260,000 gallons of water by not washing the trays

Hope this helps.
~Maura Adams

--- In efs-food@yahoogroups.com, "Sam Hummel" <sam@...> wrote:
>
> Several boarding schools in the Northeast have gone the no-tray route.
> This article claims it saves money and waste, but doesn't give any
> specific measurements. I say give'm a call:
> http://tinyurl.com/2oapjd
>
> Here's another report about a school doing it and seeing a 30%
> reduction in food waste through a No Tray Day event:
>
http://www.busrc.com/srcblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/no-tray-day-report.doc
>
> I'd recommend Googling for "no tray day" and see what you find.
>
> If you conduct an official study, that would be an excellent tool for
> the campus sustainability community! And, you could likely get
> invited to present your results at some conferences, like AASHE 2008,
> Smart & Sustainable Campuses, Greening of the Campuse, National Farms
> to Cafeterias, etc...
>
> -Sam
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Sam Hummel
> IT Director
> AASHE
> Work: (919) 647-9524
> cell: (919) 475-8136
> sam@...
>