Page 600 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

“Scrappy” Sustainability at Ohio Wesleyan University Chapter j 29 567

In the fall of 2014, another Environmental Studies student, Allie France,
noticed the large amount of waste thrown away in our campus dining halls,
especially the throw-away takeout containers, used by many students on
campus, which could be seen filling many of the campus garbage receptacles
after lunch and dinner. Why doesn’t OWU use reusable carryout containers?
This is the kind of question one often hears from environmentally-conscious
students. The course instructor suggested Allie do something about the situ-
ation as a course project. Allie embarked on what she thought would be an
easy task: convince our campus food service to offer reusable containers.
However, such sustainability efforts are never easy.
Initially Allie was encouraged by the response from campus food service:
they would love to offer students reusable carryout containers. Alas, soon
afterward it became evident that our old campus industrial dishwasher could
not handle the increased demand for washing reusable containers. Indeed, the
shift to throw-away containers and utensils was in part the result of the
inadequate dishwasher. All of a sudden Allie was faced with learning much
more about industrial dishwashers than she ever imagined. What she suspected
was that our old dishwasher was very inefficient, and a new dishwasher would
quickly recoup costs due to energy savings alone while allowing the OWU
food service to offer reusable food containers. At this point the semester was
over, as was Allie’s course project. In the spring, Allie continued to work on
the project. She worked with Buildings & Grounds to develop a return on
investment (ROI) analysis for a new dishwasher. She then had to go to the
campus Finance Officer. There were many infrastructure projects on campus
ahead of the dishwasher, and, indeed, it was not even on the radar. However,
the short ROI (around 2 years) and the fact that Allie had drawn attention to
the issue moved the effort forward, a new dishwasher was purchased and
installed in the spring of 2015 and reusable food containers were offered in the
fall of 2015.
The reusable food container initiative faced some significant hurdles, again
illustrating how complicated initiating sustainability projects can be
(Fig. 29.4). Unfortunately, despite each container having a bar code, our
campus information system (used by food service, the library, for student
records, and IDs, etc.) was old enough that there was no easy way to modify
the code to allow students to “check out” reusable containers. Replacing the
campuswide information system was also not feasible. Thus students paid $5
when they took a reusable container and were given $5 when they personally
handed the containers back at certain food service locations on campus. A
student project in the fall of 2016 surveyed students about the reusable con-
tainers. The additional effort involved in returning the containers proved too
much for many students. In addition, some students indicated that carrying
around the reusable container suggested the image of an “eco freak.” These
students were all for the reusable containers, but they did not seem themselves
as part of the “ecological clique” on campus and felt uncomfortable using the