A) College cafeteria food is about

A) College cafeteria food is about to get a bit tougher to take – literally. This fall thousands of students will have to navigate their university dining halls without one crucial feature: the cafeteria tray. B) From the University of California at Santa Cruz to Virginia Tech, cafeteria trays are disappearing, enabling universities and food-service companies to reduce food waste, lower energy costs and make college campuses more environmentally sustainable. The reasoning goes like this: When students are allowed to use trays, they tend to roam around the cafeteria grabbing food with abandon until space on the tray runs out. If you remove their trays, you make it impossible for them to carry a surplus of dishes, and they will make their selections more carefully and be satisfied with less food overall. That saves on food. Further, getting rid of trays means dishwashers have less to wash. That saves on water and energy. C) “Dining facilities on campuses take up to five times more water, five times more energy, five times more waste per square foot than the dorm,” says Monica Zimmer, a spokeswoman for Sodexo, a food-service company that serves approximately 600 US campuses.