Trayless Tuesdays fail to save water, power in Dillin

With or without trays, Tuesday dinners in Dillin Hall are no more environmentally friendly during
Trayless Tuesdays

Trayless Tuesdays, a Greenfield initiative in Dillin Hall, have consistently failed to meet their goals of saving water and power.
According to Dillin staff, Trayless Tuesdays don’t save time during clean-up, and the dishwashing machine runs just as much as any other day of the week.
“Theoretically, if you turn the machine off ‘x’ amounts of minutes or hours sooner, it would save that much water,” Bill Masullo, general manager of student dining services, said.
He also said that the dishwashing machine is not shut off any earlier than usual.
“Students would, in protest [of Trayless Tuesdays], leave their dishes on the table,” Masullo said. “We ended up staying longer cleaning everything up.”
Maria Falcon, a Dillin employee, said that students use fewer dishes when there are no trays, which was one of Greenfield’s sustainability goals. She also said that more dishes are left on the tables when there are no trays, which delays the shut-off of the washing machine while employees bus the tables.
The dishwasher uses 226.8 gallons
of water an hour.
Trayless Tuesdays have taken place in Dillin for several years. Until recently, students from Greenfield would remove the trays and put them in Dillin’s kitchen, Masullo said. He said this annoyed the students.
“It was a take-away,” Masullo said. “There was no information. [They were were saying] Sodexo took my trays, and there’s no answer.”
Greenfieldno longer removes the trays from
Dillin. Instead, club members leave fliers on tables that claim that removing the trays will lessen the amount of water being used in Dillin.
“Several students have rightfully shown that the benefits of a trayless campus don’t outweigh the convenience of keeping them,” freshman Amy Krol, a Greenfield representative, said. “Greenfield respects that right to choose.”
The fliers left by Greenfield list potential benefits of removing trays from Dillin permanently, including a claim of 1,587.6 gallons of water saved a week.
“Bill Masullo reassured me that when the trays were taken out that the washing machine does turn off
earlier,” Krol said. “Also, if the trays were to be taken out, [Masullo said] that the dining staff could accommodate their dishwashing procedures as necessary.”
That figure is based on the 226.8 gallons allegedly saved on Tuesdays, a claim denounced by Dillin staff, including Masullo.
Now that the trays remain available for use on Tuedsays, students such as freshmen Quinn Flaherty and Tuapasi Taetu’u are ignoring the Greenfield fliers and signs near the tray pick-ups.
“I need to go back and forth to get my food [without a tray],” sophomore Chris Kamaka said.
Freshman Tessa Hanson was one of the few students in Dillin without a tray.
“I don’t think it’s a strong enough movement,” Hanson said. “We should get rid of trays altogether. People are silly to complain over something this little.”