 Students must sort their trash in an effort to reduce the volume of waste.
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Despite the snow that has all of Boston swathed in white, the joint efforts of Ecopledge and the Boston College Dining Services have the BC campus looking just a little bit greener.
In an attempt to make campus more eco-friendly, the two organizations worked together to initiate a new system for sorting waste and trash in Carney's Dining Hall for the new year.
"The key focus of the system in the first place is to reduce," said Merril Putnam, Ecopledge member and A&S '08.
The system requires students to separate their trash, food waste, plates, silverware, and plastic containers in an assembly line-style setup. One goal of the sorting process is to reduce the volume of food waste leaving the dining hall. Separating the plastic containers is one way to do so, although the containers cannot be recycled because they have food waste on them.
"Ideally, there should be no stack of plastics in the dining hall because, as a to-go container, they're meant to serve students who wish to take their meal out of the dining hall," said Peggy Fox, Ecopledge member and A&S '08. "We want students to make the effort to ask for a plate when being served their food."
While Ecopledge members are supporting the dining hall in an effort to switch to compostable containers, a change that may be far in the future, the goal of the system right now is to raise awareness about the sheer amount of waste that comes from the dining hall.
"If you can't see where your waste is going, it's hard to see the impact you're having," Putnam said. "It would be great if students could make a connection between the waste they're making and the greater global context."
Putnam is the Ecopledge member largely responsible for the change and has volunteered 80 hours in the past two weeks to aid students at the stations, taking time off from her paid job to do so. She and Fox are members of the Campaigns Committee of Ecopledge. The students initially met with Dining Services in the beginning of the year to discuss removing bottled water from Hillside Cafe for a week. When such a feat proved to be impossible, Putnam shifted her focus to addressing the waste issue in Carney's.
2008 Woodie Awards
