Study waste
What do students in the library have in common with food in the trash bin?
1 tone*
When I was 17 I worked in a small hotel in northern Italy as a “dishwasher”. Washing plates, cutlery, pots, and managing waste. It was for two weeks when for some reason there was no garbage truck coming to pick up the organic waste. When it finally arrived, our capacity consisting of green-colored bins was completely maxed out. There were 8 of them, extremely heavy. Garbageman told us that he wouldn’t manage alone as it took 2 people to move the container up a small hill. Moving those beasts meant that they opened from time to time, releasing green gas and everything that you don't want to smell. We managed and loaded the truck. This left me not only craving for a shower but also thinking of how much was it. How much of it was food waste?
Scientific method
My goal was clear. Every day I would take the food waste bucket and before binning it in the green bin, I would weigh it. Small scale in the basement soon revealed the numbers. Average between 20 to 25 kg, 3 times a day. Result? Me being excited by the thought that we daily bin equivalent to my own weight. One Boris a day, every single day. All of it went either through my hands or the hands of my colleague to give me a good idea of what it consisted of. My conclusion: food waste.
My solution
Based on my best thinking of the time, I assumed that the awareness of the customers was a key issue. People don't realize it, they don't touch it, they don't see it at last they don't smell it. Seeing leftovers on one’s plate is very far from what I saw. I decided that I wanted to change the perception of the leftovers of the people and let them rethink how they perceive their food. I wanted to share the visuals, which I soon began creating by “sneaking” parts of the waste into my room, creating these visuals:
Impact
Can be hard to measure, but I am pretty sure mine was 0. Except for the impact on me as a person, which is also a key drive for me to write this. Why 0? Simply I never shared any of them, I did not talk to the director, chefs, or customers. I did not have the courage to share them with the outside world, to confront the real world, which I was at the same time hoping to change. It simply stayed in my gallery until now. Waste.
Thesis
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Last week I was introduced to my thesis topic: food waste. I did not choose it I was told: this is what you will write about, I had a bit of mixed feelings. Only later when my friend said: “That’s such a Boris topic.” I realized: “Yes, yes actually I am interested in food waste, I know there is a lot, I know how it smells and how heavy it is.” What more I thought about this old idea of mine, my experience in the hotel, and the project I wanted to start, but never did. This particular feeling of being distant from the real world or the potential cause of the problem. Sometimes designing a solution, yet omitting the crucial part of actually executing this idea reminds me of different kind of waste. I face this waste a lot nowadays…
Study waste
I have recently met two researchers from the Institute focusing on Plasma Donations, after a crash course on the importance of plasma and its current shortage in NL. I asked them about possible promotions among university students. “Unfortunately we don't have the personal capacity for it.”
A few weeks before in the course of Health and Medical psychology we were designing interventions to reinforce positive behavior (e.g. eating fruits) or avoid negative ones (e.g. smoking). We did, we made a 12-minute presentation. We got our grades. End.
Opportunity cost, as referred to in economics, means that if I am solving an imaginary assignment for a grade I can not be at the same time solving a real issue such as plasma donations shortage.
Current status quo.
On one side we have problems and challenges, and organizations working hard on solving them, wrestling with a shortage of resources.
On the other we have students studying hard in libraries creating never-to-deploy interventions, hoping to get good grades to solve problems… one day.
Or maybe not solve problems, but work with children, learning the developmental stages and all the theories about child development without seeing a child? Learning the 8-step organizational change model without ever being confronted with the reality of organization. My list would be close to infinite. Is this how research works?
1 tone
We study theories, we study models, we study how to measure, we study how to analyze, and we do all of this spending hours in the lecture halls, classrooms, and library, meeting only people who want to do the same…one day.
Here is an alternative approach, instead of getting all this to prepare for something one day. Let’s get out of the library see, and experience the problems, meet different people. Let’s figure out the scope, find scientific methods to tackle it, sit in the library figuring out how they are doing it elsewhere (yes there is also time to sit in the library) talk to real people solving real issues. Then at last actually also let’s do something, contributing to improvement or innovation. If it does not work, great, students can do something different and try again because that’s real learning.
There are enough problems and enough student resources to help solve them, yet they are busy studying.
I am expecting a critique, I am expecting friction. And that’s alright with me, I will gladly listen to different opinions. By no means do I think students should not study, but a recent talk with a clinical pedagogy student who hasn’t seen a child during 3 years of her bachelor's shows that we should really think about how much we study and how much we do.
Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed it check out BEYOND LIBRARY to find out more, consider subscribing and I will be very glad for any kind of feedback or comments, hit me up!
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*if someone did the math and got a result of 840 kg, 60kg x 14 days, good job, however, this did not include waste from the bar which I did not weight
