Waste and Plastic Reduction at Morningside University (final)

Sustainability around the world is important for the sake of our planet, and students at Morningside University believe their school should do its part to tackle the war on plastic.

Alli Madden, a second year biology and environmental science student at Morningside, said “There is some lack of avalibility and convince” when asked about the challenges she faces with being eco-friendly on campus.

Alli stated that her main issue is that the dining halls use Styrofoam and plastic dishware, cups, and to-go boxes. She said, “When serving food to people, they should have it on a plate, or even on small food baskets, with real silverware.”

“A lot of problems could be fixed, but the coronavirus pandemic has made everything more challenging for people to find more methods of being more eco-friendly and reducing plastic waste.” Alli expressed.

Sharron Bassette is a senior representative, majors in political science, and holds a chair for the Sustainability Subcommittee at Morningside.

The Sustainability Subcommittee mission statement states, “The sustainability subcommittee is established to assist and bring awareness to students and the larger Morningside Campus community on areas of sustainability. … Morningside University and all of those associated belong to a larger community and all share the rewards and benefit of the earth and environment.”

Alli claims the commitee should better their ways of adverstising the sustainability methods on campus. She has never been educated on the sustainability options on campus and “just figured it out” herself.

Alli said that the commitee should adopt ways of spreading awareness by having the topic be brought up in hall meetings, posters around campus, or different interactive activities around campus.

“I see people trying to recycle all the time. I’ve seen people try to recycle empty pizza boxes, fountain drink cups, and other things. I can only imagine that students are not fully educated on resources.” Alli said.

One way Shar reduces plastic is by making “bottle bricks”. The idea is to fill a plastic bottle with recyclable materials then send it to a participating companies. The companies then utilize the bottle bricks to build things.

When asked about sustainability methods Morningside should adopt Shar stated, “I think Morningside is pretty good at reducing waste. However, it’s up to the students to follow through with that. We have an excellent recycling program on campus & sadly I do not see a lot of people use it. As of right now, I don’t know what other things Morningside could adopt other than researching solar panels to provide cleaner energy.”

This is quite contradicting compared to Alli’s statement about Morningside’s efforts with sustainability. When Shar spoke on her opinion, Alli made notice that students may not be fully aware of all their resources to reduce waste and recycle on campus.

Similar to Alli though, the biggest challenge Shar faces when trying to be more eco-friendly is avoiding single-use plastics, “especially with the coronavirus pandemic and places not allowing reusable cups”.

Shar explained that the method of “reduce, reuse, and recycle” has been “drilled into our heads” since we were like 5 years old”. Shar said, “As I got older and received more education, I realized how big of a problem plastic waste is and just waste in general.”

Shar made a compelling statement that “small changes add up when trying to reduce your carbon footprint.” Making small changes and taking small steps to reduce plastic waste is one of the best ways to make a huge impact.

Some small changes everyone can make are making sure things are unplugged when not being used, turning off the lights when no one is home, shopping second-hand, or shopping with brands that use sustainable materials.

One popular method recently is reducing meat intake. Methods like meatless Mondays, switching from meat to beans or different meatless options, and cutting out beef products are all ways that people can utilize to reduce their carbon footprint.

Leighton Barnum, a second year nursing major at Morningside, stated that students should be aware of the “consequences” of littering, not recycling, and in general, being not eco-friendly. “When someone litters, it pisses me off. Just hold onto it until you find a fucking trash can or recycling bin.” Leighton stated violently.

Leighton stated that he thinks Morningside does a “seemingly okay job” at being eco-friendly. The main problems he has on campus is avaliblilty of recycling bins, the Mustang Grill using Styrofoam to-go food containers, and not being able to use reusable cups.

“Although some of these are caused from the pandemic, there can still be changes made to make Morningside a greener university.”, Leighton said.

Even though these students all have different views on the severity of the war on plastic, they all realize that this is a problem; the rest of the world should believe so too.

Recycling materials, reusing dishware, and reducing plastic purchases are just a few necessary steps that everyone can take to possibly end the war on plastics and save our planet. This is our only known home after all.