Photo Courtesy of Morgan Maccione.
With the spring semester, dining halls are set to reduce plastic waste with new sustainable carry-out containers. In the fall, changes were made across all aspects of campus life in order to accommodate the students living on campus while keeping everyone safe in accordance with state guidelines for reopening schools. When students arrived on campus in the fall, the dining halls provided plastic takeout containers and pre-wrapped sides and snacks in order to minimize the possible spread of disease. For students, it was difficult to limit the amount of daily waste while also keeping everyone safe. Now, at the beginning of the new semester, things are looking up, sustainability-wise, in the dining halls.
The SGA Chair of Sustainability, Milo Becker ‘22, has been working behind the scenes with Dining Services Director Ingrid Bushwack and purchasing manager Kristen Serwinski since last semester. His long term goal is to find alternatives to make the dining halls less wasteful, while keeping in mind the economic and social conditions in a time of the pandemic. This posed a challenge for Becker due to the safety measures from the state guidelines that enforced schools to use disposable ware in order to minimize spread in the dining halls. Nevertheless, the planning done during the fall semester was just a springboard for what was to come. After a full semester of learning to live with COVID-19 on campus, Becker wrote via email that dining services are definitely more equipped for challenges and receptive to feedback. At the moment, all three dining halls have been slowly introducing new recycled containers made from the byproducts of crop harvests. From a memo, provided by Becker via Serwinski, the containers are made from an ecologically-friendly “chemical-free pulping process [that] saves energy and water.” Also, dining halls are now giving students the option to request different size containers if they want smaller or larger portions, an improvement in addressing food waste compared to last semester. All students need to do is to simply ask the servers for their preferred size since the option is not given by default.
Although this is a step in the right direction, there is still work that needs to be done. Particularly, Becker writes about the necessity “to continue searching for inefficiencies and wasteful practices and products in our dining techniques, in order to make our [Connecticut College] food systems more sustainable.” Ideally, Becker hopes that in the long run dining halls “will shift to solely paper and recycled materials,” however disposable utensils will be difficult to phase out due to the lack of alternatives for making the dispensing system safe. Fortunately, students can address the problem on their end- Becker encourages students to bring their own cutlery in order to reduce waste. On another note, it is also important to “properly rinse [plastic containers] before recycling to avoid contamination.” The same piece of advice goes for pizza boxes; the box must be rinsed well to avoid contamination in the recycling bins.
Overall, when asked if there is anything else he would like to add, Becker mentions the help that he has gotten from the Senior Fellows from the Office of Sustainability: Grace Neale ‘21 and Hans Horst-Martz ‘21. Becker especially remarks on Horst-Martz’s “incredible work,” whose compassion showed how much he valued sustainability. For other students who are passionate about the environment, there is still work that needs to be done. If you are interested in making the dining experience more sustainable, or if you have any ideas on waste-free alternatives for the dining halls, contact Milo Becker at mbecker2@conncoll.edu.
