in my school we have cardboard trays, and i find them to be very convenient, considering we have only 2 hands and if you get a drink, soup and sandwich, theres no way to hold it all unless you have a tray! i hope my school doesnt get rid of them just yet.

My first thought was that it probably helps people eat less by forcing them to make more trips because they can only eat what they carry.

I'm on the fence here. It seems really annoying to have to carry a salad, soup, and drink (a perfectly reasonable meal) separately. Meanwhile, there are plenty of unhealthy meals that fit on one plate, and there is still pizza and beer. I don't think this is going to resolve bad habits or solve the freshman 15. Still, the eco argument seems reasonable. I would be willing to deal with a little annoyance if I knew it was significantly reducing waste.

My school did this and its not that inconvenient. I worked in the dining hall and there was definitely less waste which is good and the amount of spills remained the same.

good lord whats next, carrying the food in your hands?

my school has started doing this and i dont notice a difference. i never used trays anyway but they did show, with huge plastic bins, how much water is saved. cool.

woahhhh caterpillargirl. chill out. its a lot of money and water saving and yeah, its kinda greedy to save money by not having trays but really...just get up and get another plate. its really not that hard. unless you are really lazy and in that case, theres a whole other problem.

I think it's a bad idea. Why not make the trays smaller instead of doing away with them complete? Or make serving ware smaller? I remember the glasses were so small in my college dining hall, so you either had to bring a water bottle to fill with enough water, or get tons of glasses to have enough to drink when you sat down to eat.

My school just got rid of the trays starting this semester. It's not a big inconvenience, get a plate of food and a drink, carry it to your table, then get up if you want more food! Although I don't know how much food waste it's eliminating - I work in the dish room in one of the dining halls, and there's still a LOT of food getting thrown out! People need to learn to only take what they'll actually eat, then get up for more if they're still hungry. It's ridiculous.

And now I actually have to go to work. Fun times.

They tried it for a week. It was SUCH a pain! Then they made it permanent. Still a pain! Especially since it was in the AYCE dining hall. Sure, you can come and go as many times as you please, but if you want one thing from each shop, you could end up cartoonishly balancing plates across your arms! I was so worried I was going to drop something or spill plates together.

It's still better than those stupid carrots admonishing you not to waste food.

I didn't use them much before my cafeteria discontinued them anyway, but I highly doubt it will encourage anyone to eat less. I don't see it reducing food waste, in my cafeteria at least - it's the norm to take at least 2 dishes of food, if not more, and throw most of it out. However, that's because our food is generally really bad, and often looks a lot more edible then it ends up being!

At my all-you-care to eat dining hall, there are a number of stations. My friends and I use lunch there as the main meal of the day, and a few of us live without meat the rest of the time. so I end up consuming most of my calories there, and have much smaller meals at breakfast and dinner.

We have lovely food at my school, but if I want cooked broccoli from one stand, and nothing else from it, I can't put anything else on that plate, because of safety standards, So I have a plate with a few pieces of broccoli rolling around on it. Then I'll get whatever carved meat they're offering for the day, and my hands are now full. I don't have a drink, and there's no way, based on serving sizes and my needed caloric intake, I have a full meal.

My normal meal as of late has been as follows: a cup of diet Coke, filled with water once that is finished, whatever chicken stirfry they're serving, along with the veggie stirfry, (which I pick through, as there are certain veggies I don't like), cut fresh fruit, salad, a cookie, and coffee.

We're now talking about six different containers that I get up and down to retrieve. At best, very best, it'll only take four containers (but that's me taking the cookie without a plate, which they discourage.)

And though the food is good, from time to time accidents are still made. I got some very, very, very salty cobbler the other day. It was an accident, as normally their cobbler is very good, but no one would eat it. I look like I'm wasting food, and have a full bowl to bus.

I feel like I'd be less critical of them taking away our trays if we hadn't already used Styrofoam for a week since school started, since the carousel that takes the food back to the kitchen was broken. We also don't buy or use any food from local, sustainable food sources, even though we live in a deeply agricultural part of the state.

In short, they're frustrating, lead to burning my hand on the soup I know must carry bowl to palm or spill, lead to a more difficult time while busing plates, and the school hasn't made other steps I believe should go along with this one, insignificant change that upset a good number of people.

If I were still working in the washroom (ahh, lovely college days LOL), this'd make my day. But I was a student who had to eat at the cafeteria at that time too, so it's kind of inconvenient.

And I doubt people will stop throwing more food though.

Dude, I don't understand when I was in college how kids can just be so wasteful with their food.

We had trays in our dining hall in college and they were probably a good 20 years old or so...it's not like they were making new ones every year or anything. They washed them just like dishes and it made carrying your food a lot easier, especially if you had a hot drink like coffee and a bowl of cereal and some fruit or something. I probably would've been upset if they didn't have them.

They had trays at my school, but no one ever used them. It was considered uncool, I guess. A sure way to know if someone was a freshman or not was to see if they used a tray...

I work on a college campus and they're just started this within the last year. At first I really hated it and was annoyed by it, but I will have to admit that I do waste less food, so, it's a good thing. And of course saving water!

lol i'm so glad this did not pass when I was in college. I used to LOVE going to those dorm buffets and just eat EVERYTHINGGG. of course, the tray was vital in my trips between chair and buffet line.

My biggest problem is with the "get up and get more food" argument. Lines run LONG at my school, and it will often take 10+ minutes to reach a single food station. Considering that I barely have time to wash my hair in the mornings, I am way too busy to stand around an EXTRA 30 minutes. Luckily at my school they kept the trays at the worst offender.

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