Hacktivism Intent – MatthewB
Problem: Excess waste of food on campus
My project though not easy it would be beneficial to both Umaine, the environment, and to those who are unable to feed themselves and their families. If you go to one of the on campus dining halls you’d notice the large quantity of food that is simply thrown out, many people don’t realize that each plate adds up to a HUGE amount of waste. I believe that we need some sort of on campus composting that would eliminate simply throwing food away. We also need to inform those who don’t realize the impact of throwing all this food out, where it could go to food pantries and other sources of food that would help those who are less fortunate.
I would aim to do this by using several techniques such as Mass Media informing, and perhaps this would get the talk started. We could also go to a zero-waste system where we compost and reuse food that isn’t able to be reserved to a community feeder, perhaps to benefit the various gardens around campus. We need to share information that is pretty much inaccessible through simple observation, and utilize communications media to share what this change could impact. Perhaps we could have some sort of reward system that rewards the student body after certain milestones are reached.
2 thoughts on “Hacktivism Intent – MatthewB”
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This is something I’m passionate about. I would like to help with this. It seems to be achievable to set up on a smaller scale if not getting people composting right away, at least informing the general public and student body about the importance of not wasting so much food. You would think there would be something implemented so that when perfectly edible food is about to be thrown out, it could instead go to a shelter or soup kitchen.. There are always set backs though, scheduling, transportation, timing, variability in content.. If the University invested in a system that could handle the huge amounts of food waste that are produced weekly, they would probably massively benefit from this. They could use the soil in gardens around campus, and potentially sell the compost to locals, and local businesses. Why not just start a soil/compost company based @UMaine?
Hey Matt,
I think that this is an important issue that is overlooked far too often, especially in places such as dining halls where as soon as you put your food on the conveyor belt it is out of sight out of mind. I am curious what you were thinking of for your communication. I think that this is a challenging thing to just make an app or website for, but perhaps it could be done where food waste reduction is tracked. Perhaps in this platform rewards and milestones could be displayed. It would also be great to join up with other composting efforts on campus.