University of Hawaii launched its green campaign today at the campus cafeteria.
Gone are the plastic trays and styrofoam-- and in their place, biodegradable containers.

Lunch time at the UH Manoa Cafeteria inside Gateway Hall and there's something noticeably missing. For starters, no more plastic trays, making it a bit more difficult to bring piles of plates back to the table.

"It's inconvenient because you can't grab everything you want," says student Mahina Boyle.

"I don't know I have to go back and forth all the time and I'm gonna get the same amount of food every time," says student Hunter Overacker.

Trayless dining means less washing to save water, and less food waste. Since it's buffet dining, students tend to pile it on and throw food away. Other universities have done it and cut down the waste of about 25 percent on food and 30 percent on water.

"Some of the studies that we've seen is for every thousand meals served we're seeing a savings of 200 gallons of water. So it's a rough number but we're serving between 10 to 12 hundred students a day here," says Sodexco Food Service employee Mark Nakamoto. "Styrofoam will no longer be in the cafeteria, we're moving towards biodegradables."

In this dining hall, no more styrofoam to fill up the landfills. Instead, biodegradable containers, cups, and forks. They're made out of sugar cane and corn starch and can decompose in 90 days. A student group called Sustainable Saunders is leading the effort to educate the students with hopes that all the dining halls on campus can follow.

"We need to take steps towards reducing waste and to me that outweighs the con of having to go back for seconds," says Tamara Armstrong. "I think that's fair, I think that's fair."