In fall of 2023, Ellie Butkovich '26 was working at the Statler Hotel and found herself reflecting on the intersection of hospitality and sustainability. She sensed that there were ways to make the guest experience more sustainable—without sacrificing on quality.

When Anna Ben-Shlomo, sustainability coordinator at Cornell Dining, presented the work being done on campus to green operations to Ellie’s class, her ears perked up. After class, Ellie signed up to work with Cornell Dining as a student sustainability coordinator.

For the past few years, Ellie has worked to educate her peers on small actions they can take to waste less. Together, these individual choices can amount to big reductions in waste in Cornell Dining halls.

“I don't have one huge example of a change, but lots of little ones,” Ellie says. “I feel like my work has been successful any time a chef tells me they've made changes because of our feedback.”

Ellie and her fellow coordinators recently shared feedback from diners that the ramen recipe was too salty. They noticed that ramen was one of the top dishes students were discarding, so they asked why. Then they passed along student feedback to the chef at Rose House Dining Hall, who has since modified the recipe. Ramen is now a guest favorite at Rose House.

Ellie and her team have spent time carefully identifying and weighing food waste in Cornell Dining’s various locations. What they found is that students on average waste .12 pounds of food at dinner—about the weight of a golf ball.

“Although this may seem small,” says Anna Ben-Shlomo, remember that thousands of students go to dining rooms each day. All of a sudden, that’s a lot of golf balls. We believe that with just a little change, we all can help make a big difference.”

Ellie and her team have created posters and videos to help foster awareness of small actions that add up. These campaigns urge students to consider coming back for seconds (“our eyes are bigger than our stomachs”), and to take a little to see if they like it or not (“taste, not waste”).

Learn more about Cornell’s Beyond Waste campaign happening now through the end of March, to inspire everyone on campus to rethink our relationship to waste.