Ole Miss Food and Water

There are a lot of things to consider when talking about food and water.

When eating, how often do we think about how much we get when we eat? What should be done with leftovers? How much water are we using a day? How can we conserve water? Although, many take food and water for granted, there are solutions.

A recent focus group at Ole Miss discussed food that gets thrown out and alternative procedures for using leftover food.

“Compost, that sounds like a reasonable solution,” said Drew Clinton, assistant director of academic support. “I think they could also probably sell smaller portions so that their won’t be so much that is wasted.”

He suggested that people people had the choice to buy a smaller portion of food, they might not buy a larger portion because they would not need it.

It is difficult for most people to imagine how much one person uses water a day. Water is harder to conserve than food.

People must consciously think about washing hands when using the bathroom, water the lawn, drinking water, and showering.

“I think it is more than 10 gallons,” said Anne Rhodes, a learning specialist at Ole Miss. “Between flushing toilets, dishwashers, doing laundry, showers, dishes, and watering your lawn, it’s over 10 gallons, but when I sit and think about it. I think its a lot more than 10 or 15 gallons, it’s up there.”

There are things the Oxford community can do to conserve water.

“I think it all starts with awareness,” Clinton said. “It’s hard to break old habits. However, if you get the community to buy into the problem, eventually we will get results; getting started is the hardest problem.”

The focus group agreed that conserving food and water is not just a community or university problem because it is a problem across the world. But there is a need to get started at the community level.

“It is going to have to become a community thing and they are going to have to have conversations like we are having here,” said Pete Lewis, a learning specialist with the Office of Student-Athlete Academic Support. “It’s going to be hard to maintain conservation on a community level because people take so many of these things for granted.”