Colleges attempt to reduce plastic waste

Plastic bottle bans have been implemented on several college campuses across the country, encouraging schools like Lehigh to follow in similar fashion.

Lehigh is currently following sustainability practices set to be achieved within the decade of 2020-2030. These interdisciplinary and interdepartmental efforts that establish long-term visions for Lehigh’s progress towards sustainability are laid out in Lehigh’s Campus Sustainability Plan.

According to the plan, Lehigh is “committed to taking actions in the area of air & climate, buildings, dining services, energy, grounds, purchasing, transportation, waste and water to make Lehigh’s operations more sustainable.”

Other higher education institutions have pursued the termination of sales of plastic bottles at dining and on-campus facilities.

According to the University of California, Davis’s sustainability plan, the university will completely eliminate plastic bottle usage by January 1, 2023. 

Carla Fresquez, UC Davis sustainability engagement program manager, said she develops and maintains outreach and engagement material for their campus.

As part of reinforcing sustainable standards, Fresquez highlighted the plastic bottle ban.

“We continue to make progress towards eliminating plastic bottles on our campus,” Fresquez said. “UC Davis stores have phased out plastic bottles and have replaced them with aluminum cans.”  

UC Davis has been met with positive feedback regarding the sustainable practices they have put into place.

Fresquez said UC Davis was ranked the number one most sustainable university in North America and fifth in the world, according to the University of Indonesia’s GreenMetric World University Rankings in 2021. 

In addition to external validation the university has received, Fresquez said UC Davis has also been met with positive feedback within the university.

“Based on my personal interactions with students and the number of students I regularly see with their own water bottles, I believe that most UC Davis students have embraced and welcomed changes that advance the goal of plastic reduction,” Fresquez said.

Lehigh follows behind sustainable trailblazers like UC Davis.

According to the office of sustainability’s website, Lehigh has installed over 50 water bottle refill stations since 2014 in order to motivate students to reuse water bottles instead of buying single-use plastic bottles.

Hannah Levi, ‘25, is a university ambassador for the Global Climate Pledge. She said plastic single-use containers, like plastic single-use bottles, add to pressing environmental issues on Lehigh’s campus.

“There’s no reason Hideaway Cafe, the vendors in Upper Court and Hawk’s Nest should still be using single-use containers,” Levi said. “Although they may use compostable materials, there is nowhere accessible to compost the containers, so they become landfill.”

Molly Landers, ‘25, said the availability and accessibility of disposable plastic products at Lehigh is visible just by walking past garbage bins around campus. 

She said garbage was always overflowing outside of FML last spring. 

“It was sad to see, and it seemed like nobody cared to want to make it better,” Landers said. “They just kept adding to the pile.”

To further limit plastic usage and garbage production, Fresquez said UC Davis provides on-site reusable utensil sets as part of a reusable utensil distribution campaign sponsored by UC Davis Sustainability and Student Housing and Dining Services. 

Levi said Lehigh should offer reusable containers to reduce waste.

This utensil campaign aligns with both the University of California’s Zero Waste Policy Goals and advances sustainability efforts that UC Davis embraces.

“This collaborative effort will put over 6,000 stainless steel utensil travel sets into the hands of the UC Davis community to help reinforce the behavior change needed to really eliminate the unnecessary waste that single-use items create,” Fresquez said.