Post A: One Day Audit

On Wednesday, March 22nd 2017, we’ve gathered in class to attend a function to attempt our first audit on canapés. My initial thought was to keep an eye on the amount of food being brought out and the amount of people attending the event itself. I can’t say I’ve been involved in the food and beverage industry, but I expect that serving more food, even if it meant that there would be an excessive amount of left-overs, would be better than not serving enough food – and my thoughts were somewhat correct. I was quite hesitant to ask the employee’s about the canapés, although, I’ve noticed that they tend to take the food back to the kitchen when it started to look unpresentable, even though it was nowhere near being finished. They served a terrarium inspired canapé of raw vegetables and hummus, which, in my opinion had an excessive amount of hummus for the amount of vegetables being served at a time. I understand that aesthetics are crucial in events, but was this really necessary? I’ve noticed that the foods the waiters served got more attention as opposed to the canapés that were displayed on every standing table across the room.

After attempting that first audit, I conducted one at my own home regarding our organic waste system. My current living arrangement includes two of my close friends and I, in a three bedroom apartment, in which a communal bin space is shared between all residents in the building. My roommates and I share a generally similar understanding when it comes to rubbish, we seperate recyclable items in one bin, and organic / general waste bin in the other.

Although we generally understand the gist of recycling, I’ve noticed that a lot of us aren’t as careful when it comes to our organic / general waste bin. I’ve asked my roommates why they think we do this, and their answers were similar to mine; “when I’m in a rush, I don’t really think about it”. It was not until this subject came around for me to realise why my roommates and I are defining organic wastes and general wastes together. On Saturday, 1st of April 2017, I did an audit on our waste management and paid extra attention on the content within the general waste bin. First of all, the lines between our organic and general waste bin in our household is a complete blur – we use the organic bin to compose just about anything. We use a plastic bag liner we’ve reused from previous shopping trips, in which I think is quite contradicting as general plastic bags take at least 450-1000 years to disintegrate. Our bin contains an assortment of items that has been thrown in mindlessly, such as food scraps, containers, expired fruits and vegetables, wrappers, used tissues, and baking sheets. Within the communal bins, I realised that all tenants had reused plastic bags as their garbage liner as well, which was not a big surprise as it is a very common thing to do – and although some realise how ineffective this method is, we still choose to continue to do the same thing every time.

A drastic difference in discipline when it comes to recycling bin. More thought has been put into the content of this bin. No lining to avoid mixing materials.

Main problem located in the general waste bin. This picture above shows an assortment of wastes being categorised in one bin. As you can see, the recyclable plastic container is categorised as the same type of waste as the banana peel. The reasoning for this was that there were left over food within the container – it was placed in the ‘organic waste’ bin instead of cleaning out the content and separating wastes.

 

 

reference:

“Green Waste – City Of Sydney”. Cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au. N.p., 2017. Web. 4 Apr. 2017

“Green Lid Garden Organics Bin”. Randwick.nsw.gov.au. N.p., 2017. Web. 4 Apr. 2017.

“Organic Waste”. Epa.nsw.gov.au. May, 2015. Web. 4 Apr. 2017.