By Ben Riggleman

Twice a week, under the cover of early-morning darkness, a large orange truck pulls up to Oceanview Dining Hall. Pizza crusts, paper cups, unpopular quinoa dishes — it all gets packed into this truck and never seen again. In total, that’s some 1,700 pounds of waste per week.

The truck belongs to We Compost It, a local business that describes itself as “Maine’s premiere composting company.” SMCC has been composting its food for less than three years. According to Rachel Fisk, Sodexo marketing coordinator, the school was moved to leave the landfill behind when it discovered how much it was wasting through a program of Sodexo’s: WasteLESS Week. The dining-services contractor is holding a second WasteLESS week at SMCC from Oct. 23 to 27. Every day this week, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., all waste generated in the SeaWolves Café will be captured and weighed. The results — a judgment of sorts — will be announced at lunchtime on Friday.

Other educational activities will happen in the meantime. The point will be to “try and show students how to be more sustainable in their everyday lives,” Ms. Fisk said. “But we [also] try and open their eyes on how wasteful they are.” Another goal is to raise awareness of another issue, one that mirrors wastefulness: hunger in Maine.

On Monday, in the first event of the week, Wayside Food Programs visited the dining hall. Wayside runs a soup kitchen at 135 Walton Street, Portland, as well as “community meals” in local neighborhoods. Its Food Rescue program, which SMCC participates in, distributed 772,500 pounds of food that would otherwise have been wasted in 2016, according to Wayside’s website. Some leftover food from the dining hall is also sent to Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine.

Tuesday, We Compost It will staff a table, informing Oceanview diners of the work it does to minimize the footprint of our waste.

Wednesday will be themed around water waste, a hidden effect of thrown-out food. It takes water to grow crops, and even more to raise animals for human consumption. A single egg is responsible for the use of tens of gallons of water. A hamburger takes about 150 gallons to produce, according to estimates on a U.S. Geological Survey website.

Thursday’s theme will be “Choose to Reuse,” promoting reusable drink containers with a mug raffle. Pro tip: You can get a discount on drinks if you bring a mug or cup of your own to the café! (That’s not a new policy, either.)

It’s easy to slip into wasteful habits in our world of supermarkets and college meal plans. While composting our waste is much better than letting it molder in a landfill, there’s surely room for improvement. The Beacon looks forward to an eye-opening week, courtesy of Sodexo.