Pilot program invites campus community to join Sustainable Dining Club
If Dartmouth Sustainability Coordinator Jim Merkel has his way,
this will be the year Dartmouth students get fed up with trash. September 19
marks the College's convocation ceremonies and the first time that Dartmouth
students will have the option to eat from College dining services without
producing any waste.
Sustainability Intern Emily Jones '08 eats lunch with a reusable Sustainable
Dining Club kit outside Collis Center. (Photo courtesy Jim Merkel)
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Merkel, in collaboration with the student group Sustainable
Dartmouth and College officials, has revamped Home Plate dining hall with
the goal of changing people's habits from disposability to a more
environmentally sound dining experience. If the transformation works,
"habits of zero-waste will become 'normal'," Merkel says,
"throwing away a tray-full of trash-usually after no more than 30 minutes
of use-will become psychologically difficult. The goal is to elicit an allergic
reaction to packaging and waste."
Under the new sustainability program, almost all of the formerly packaged
foods—such as milk cartons, condiments and sodas—will now be served from bulk
containers. Disposable tableware has been replaced with reusable. The few
packaged items for which no substitutes could be found will be sorted and
recycled, and all food waste will be composted and put directly back into the
campus landscaping. To support these initiatives, Home Plate has launched its
"Taste not Waste" campaign, including new mural and educational
displays in the dining hall area, slow-dining socials, tabletop trivia, and
other consciousness-raising opportunities. An opening celebration is in the
works for sometime during the fall term.
While the transition at Home Plate involved relatively easy and inexpensive
measures, the longer-term implications of this flagship effort are significant.
Merkel has calculated that as of 2004, campus trash at Dartmouth totaled 4.67
million pounds annually, up 15 percent from 2001. "That's about three and
half football fields of trash footprint per person," he translates. The
goal of the Dartmouth Sustainability Initiative is to move toward a philosophy
pioneered by Dartmouth alumnus William McDonough '73 who authored the book
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. McDonough hoped to
solve the waste problem by turning all outputs into inputs. "In that
tradition," Merkel says, "waste-free dining at Dartmouth is a big
first step toward shrinking Dartmouth's ecological footprint."
"We're trying to close all the loops," continues Merkel, who has
specialized in getting Dartmouth students to embrace the feasibility of
sustainable living. "Eventually, we'd like to get campus dishwashers
running on solar power and have the compost go directly into growing organic
food. For now, though, we'll take it one step at a time."
Students, faculty, and staff can take advantage of the waste-free
environment at Home Plate, but for some, the waste-free dining options are even
broader. Dartmouth recently established the Sustainable Dining Club, open, for
now, to the first 100 people to sign up. Members receive a free kit that will
make waste-free dining possible anywhere on campus. The kit includes a
leak-proof Nalgene bottle, an eco-mug, a cloth napkin, silverware, a carabineer
and a washable takeout container. "The carabineer is for clipping your
Nalgene bottle to your backpack and the container is part of a rotating set to
be used for takeout," explained Merkel.
With the kit comes a membership card that members can display at Home Plate and
at Collis Café in order to receive a reusable takeout container. "Returns
are on the honor system," said Merkel. "If you show up at Collis and
they don't have any more containers, you might have to go back to your dorm
room to return the ones you already have." The card's other purpose is
score keeping. The back of the card has room for members to note the number of
times they've eaten waste-free and to account for the amount of disposable
dining waste they've saved. Merkel estimates that the cost of each Sustainable
Dining Club kit is paid for after just 20 days of eating waste-free.
Although membership during September will be limited to the first 100
Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff to sign up, if the pilot program is
successful, membership will expand throughout the year. Those interested in
joining the club should contact Merkel. "The aim,"
smiles Merkel, "is to make sustainability both the most palatable and
popular dining choice."
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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