{"id":495,"date":"2018-11-27T17:08:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T17:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hqnn.org\/hqpress\/2018\/11\/27\/2018118blue-and-gold-and-green-assessing-sustainable-solutions-at-quinnipiac-university-ana-grosso\/"},"modified":"2020-09-05T19:40:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T19:40:32","slug":"2018118blue-and-gold-and-green-assessing-sustainable-solutions-at-quinnipiac-university-ana-grosso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hqnn.org\/hqpress\/2018\/11\/27\/2018118blue-and-gold-and-green-assessing-sustainable-solutions-at-quinnipiac-university-ana-grosso\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue and gold\u2026 and green"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ana Grosso<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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College is a place of innovation, thought development and self-awareness, making it the perfect environment to educate students to fight back against climate change. But often, students\u2019 day-to-day priorities overshadow our environmental consciousness. With the constant on-the-go lifestyle and busy schedules, student waste goes overlooked and sustainability takes a back seat. <\/p>\n

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Erin LeDrew, senior sociology major and vice president of Students for Environmental Action (SEA), set out on a mission to see just how conducive to waste the college lifestyle can be. LeDrew\u2019s experiment, called \u201cA Week Without Waste<\/span><\/a>,\u201d attempted to reduce the amount of paper and plastic that college students rely so heavily upon. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the biggest challenge was, especially living on York last year, they don\u2019t have anything reusable,\u201d LeDrew said. <\/p>\n

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Quinnipiac University\u2019s York Hill campus only has plastic and paper forms of dish and silverware, \u201cSo, if I was reusing anything, I was bringing it from my dorm,\u201d she said. \u201cI definitely got looks. It was definitely a stigma like, \u2018what are you doing?!\u2019 but there was literally no other option.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even on the university\u2019s Mount Carmel campus, LeDrew had limited options. She could not eat from the sushi or noodle bar as those items only come in plastic, she couldn\u2019t grab any items to go or eat any snacks that came in packaging, or even eat anything that required toppings. The cafe independently packages everything from ketchup to cream cheese and peanut butter to maple syrup. Additionally, whenever LeDrew went to order hot or freshly-made food, she had to remember to ask the server to put it on a ceramic plate instead of the default paper one. <\/p>\n

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LeDrew brought reusable silverware and dishware with her to campus every day to eliminate single-use plastic waste. \u201cIt was so hard when I was busy because there\u2019s no compostable takeaway containers, they\u2019re all plastic,\u201d LeDrew recalled. \u201cI remember running between classes and meetings and unless I could sit down and eat, I wasn\u2019t eating anything unless it was an apple or a banana.\u201d<\/p>\n

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