Nowadays, many universities have opted for an all-you-can-eat meal plan for their students on campus. This is a change from the traditional pay-as-you-go points system that many universities, including our University, have used in the past. This new dining plan created a lot more waste than expected, as students often have bigger eyes than they have bellies. As part of our plan to reduce food waste in our dining halls to be consistent with our sustainability mission, I propose that the University launch an initiative to persuade students to reduce food waste using written messages displayed in the dining halls. Many students understand the importance of being sustainable, they carry reusable water bottles, recycle their waste, and reduce their water usage in their residence halls, but student behaviors and actions are not aligned in of food waste. This appears to be because many students are unable to conceptualize how much food they waste and how this affects the university's economy as well as the environment. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayIf you were to ask students what they thought about food waste and whether they thought it was important to be conscious of the amount of food they consume wasted, many students would express attitudes that would leave believe that they were already acting very consciously. This hypothesis would be incorrect because, very often, students' explicit attitudes, their expressed and conscious attitudes, are not always in agreement with their behavior. By encouraging students to think about their feelings about food waste, we can bring them into their awareness. And in the same spirit, by combining this effort with written messages in the lunchroom, we can ask students to compare their own beliefs and attitudes to the actions they perform. For some students they may not care and their actions will show that for others they may care a lot and their actions may reflect that as well. This initiative is aimed more at those who have the right attitudes towards food waste, but who may sometimes be a little too lazy or not thoughtful enough to take actions consistent with these beliefs. The hope is to create some level of cognitive dissonance, with thoughts, beliefs, and/or behaviors inconsistent with each other, so that they can change their behaviors to match their attitudes. Similar initiatives have been carried out in university canteens to test the effectiveness of written messages to reduce the quantity of food. In a study by Whitehair and colleagues, they selected a group of students from a university canteen and followed them for 6 weeks, measuring their attitudes toward food waste repeatedly throughout the process, including at the beginning and at the end. , the researchers also measured the amount of food the students would have left behind when returning their plate after eating. Over the 6-week period, food waste was shown to decrease by 15 percent and while attitudes did not change much, behaviors did. Survey students on their attitudes and behaviors towards waste..