Photo by: Caitlin Chavez
By: Caitlin Chavez
Money has been going to waste for Simpson and affecting the environment due to trash, but there is a solution.
Simpson University has been facing a trash crisis due to ongoing styrofoam take-out containers being tossed after one use daily. Seeing trash continue to pile up in the cafeteria, in dorm halls, stairways, even outside around campus from the to-go boxes is not a good look for Simpson. It shows lack of hospitality and poor reflection to potential students who arrive on Simpson campus. If we look at the numbers from Simpson student, Daniel Martin’s research, there are at least 3,500 styrofoam food boxes tossed after one use weekly, that is $1,050 total spent. This total spent on to-go boxes is from students who grab one to take food from the cafeteria within the Monday through Friday time period alone.
To keep up with the trash, there were 4 more dumpsters added to help with making Simpson campus look more appealing. The dumpsters must be dumped more often than before, meaning SU must pay the garbage employees for picking the trash up.
Martin proposed in his essay the cafeteria stops buying 700 take-out containers a day for students completely. As a result, it can not only save them money buying $210 worth of plastic containers every day, but it will benefit the environment as well. Furthermore, it can help decrease trash production from Simpson University’s dumpsters.
Is Simpson University planning to solve this issue?
According to Noah Bryerton, ASBSU President, “Simpson University is actively working on reducing amounts of producing trash.” To replace the styrofoam boxes, the cafeteria was thinking about executing a reusable food container program next year that gives students their own to-go containers.
Instead of grabbing a to-go box from the cafeteria, students would have to bring their own to-go box in if they want to take food on the go.
Bryerton said, "A big point of conversation has been the styrofoam “to-go” containers used in the Caf. Styrofoam is awful for the environment and the containers take up lots of space”.
The Sustainability Club, established and led by Kia Flack and Sophie Actis, encouraging others on campus to be more “environmentally sustainable." If you want to start helping the environment but do not know how, you can start off by following their Instagram to receive helpful tips.