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Starting this week, Olives and The Alumni Cafe will use only compostable service ware, thanks largely to the efforts of Dawn Kwan ‘09 and Dayoung Lee ‘09 of Students for a Sustainable Stanford.
Kwan and Lee originally came up with the idea of introducing compostable products to campus eateries in their freshman Program in Writing and Rhetoric class, “The Politics of Food.” Over the past two years, they have worked with Moonbean’s, Ciao! and Stanford Dining to try to get as many campus eateries as possible to adopt compostable products.
Last year, with help from other students and dining staff, Kwan and Lee constructed cost-benefit analyses of using compostables, organized volunteers to monitor eateries and began educating fellow students about the importance of using compost bins correctly. Despite their efforts, implementation of compostable service ware in large dining facilities like Tresidder proved unmanageable, and the service ware was discontinued.
“The problem is that if compostables go into a normal trash can, they won’t compost,” Kwan said. “Even though we had volunteers directing people about what to do with their trash at lunch [at Tresidder], when we weren’t there, people were throwing the wrong things in bins.”
Undeterred, the pair has continued working to find an ideal sustainable launching ground for compostable products.
“Right now we’re starting out small, and trying to expand,” said Kwan regarding the pair’s efforts at The Alumni Cafe and Olives. “At these places, the program will be more contained and easier to control.”
The compostable forks, knives, spoons and take-out containers are made from sugar-cane fiber bagasse, potato and corn starch.
According to Erin Gaines, sustainable foods coordinator for Stanford Dining, using these compostable products has a number of positive environmental impacts, in addition to reducing the amount of waste that sits in a landfill.
Though Stanford dining will incur a slightly higher cost by switching to compostables, Kwan said that the pay-off is worth it.
“The compost service-ware is slightly more expensive than regular, but, on the other hand, it’s good publicity for the cafes,” she said. “Also, the cost of dumping normal waste in a landfill is measured by weight. The weight of waste in both of these cafes will be a lot lower with so much going to composting.”
Many employees and students that frequent these facilities are already on board with the new program.
“Before we launched the compostables program at Olives and Alumni, we received numerous comments a week from students complaining about waste in the cafes,” said Gaines. “The managers of Olives and Alumni — Lupe Pena and Ani Kish — are very dedicated to reducing waste by using compostables. They believe it is the right thing to do despite the higher costs.”
But for Kwan and other members of Students for a Sustainable Stanford, Olives and The Alumni Cafe are only the beginning.
“Stanford is a big community, and using entirely compostable products would set a good example for other universities and institutions,” Kwan said. “If feedback is positive, we could get Axe and Palm and then maybe Tressider in the coming months.”
“We really want before we graduate for all cafes to use compostables,” she said.