Waste-free Initiatives in Pitt Dining
To reach the University of Pittsburgh’s sustainability goal to reduce single-use plastics from campus, Pitt and Compass have taken several bold actions to bring more reusable and less wasteful options to campus.
Every month, Pitt’s Oakland campus uses nearly 50,000 single-use disposable cups for beverages and 225,000 to-go packages for food. The majority of these single-use disposable packaging products are not recyclable and end up in landfills. Plastic pollution and litter have an enormous detrimental environmental impact on our ecosystems. The goal of Pitt and Compass, our dining services provider, is to serve half of to-go meals and beverages in reusable containers by 2025, to reduce the use of single-use, non-recyclable to-go packaging.
Here are some of the ways Pitt and Compass are working on this goal:
Plastic Reduction
Plastic Straw and Utensil Reduction
In efforts to reduce single-use plastic from dining services, Pitt began to phase out old plastic products like straws and other utensils in August 2020. Pitt will no longer purchase these old plastic products, so once dining has run out of these items, they will be replaced with compostable alternatives. To further reduce the use of straws on campus, Pitt will replace current lids that that require straws with sip-lids that are designed to eliminate the need for straws. Straws are available by request, but those straws are compostable PLA or paper, NOT plastic.
Compostable Containers
In 2020, Pitt has had to change all food services to take-out only in response to Covid-19. This spotlighted the issues of single-use plastics on campus. Since then, all of the clamshells containers, cold cups, hot cups, and clean wraps are compostable. These compostable containers will prevent over 2 million single-use, non-recyclable containers from being distributed on the Pittsburgh campus.
Reusables
Reusable Bags (BYO[Bag])
To encourage the use of reusable bags at Pitt, and to reduce plastic bag usage, guests pay $0.25 per bag at all University of Pittsburgh locations, including Pitt Eats dining locations. Half of the proceeds from this fee go to the Pitt Green Fund to support other sustainability initiatives, and the other half is put back into Pitt Eats sustainability programming. Since 2014 when the program was launched the Oakland campus has reduced its plastic bag use by about 98%, going from 30,000 per week to about 600 per week. That’s more than 1.3 million bags saved and nearly $6,500 raised for the Pitt Green Fund since BYO[Bag] launched in 2014.
Reusable Cups
BYO[Cup] encourages the use of reusable cups when purchasing drinks on campus. Currently, there are 12,000 single-use cups used on campus each week! When you bring your own cub, you can get $1.19 hot or iced coffee or tea, and $0.25 off all espresso drinks at campus coffee cart locations! All reusable cups must have a lid-please remove and hold the lid before giving your cup to baristas to make the drink. Cups must be clean – baristas can refuse to use a reusable cup if it is not clean.
Reusable Containers
Pitt Dining plans to serve 50% of to-go meals and beverages in reusable containers by 2025 as part of the university’s Sustainability Plan. This plan is being spearheaded by the Choose to Reuse program. The Choose to Reuse program allows students to exchange a token for a clean reusable container in one of Pitt’s dining facilities. When they are done with the container, they just drop it off at at one of the Choose to Reuse machines, and Pitt washes it for you! All Pitt students can receive one free reusable container, as well as buy additional containers for $5. Just one of these boxes can save 300+ non-renewable containers from ending up in the landfill.