Royals Den serves no decay

I’ve noticed during the past couple weeks I’ve been back at school how frequently the Den’s takeout is used. The Den is wonderful when you’re on the run and need to grab a bite to eat quickly. The problem is the materials that are used for takeouts. Styrofoam, convenient because it doesn’t leak or become soggy when food is in it for long periods of time, also does not decompose. Although I assume it must decompose sometime, the research points to ‘never’. When and if it does, it certainly won’t in our lifetime.

It may not seem like you’re using very much styrofoam or plastic, after all, you’re only one person and you don’t even eat at the Den very often. Let’s say a person, her name is Jean, eats a takeout meal once a week for a semester from the Den. Jean receives a styrofoam container, a plastic straw, lid and fork and a paper cup (whether it’s for a hot or cold drink, they’re both made out of paper) for every meal. This means thirty styrofoam containers. Jean is only one person. Let’s say only 100 people out of our school population of 1,429 will order a takeout meal once a week. It’s now 3000 styrofoam containers. 3000 styrofoam containers that take innumerable years to decompose.

What if, instead of giving out the styrofoam containers, we switch to something that will decompose in our lifetime, like cardboard. McDonalds, a multi-billion, world-wide corporation (one of those that we have no problem railing on for many of their practices) switched to paper products to house their hamburgers long ago. Why is EMU so far behind the times? What if we would get $0.10, or whatever the cost of a container, taken off our bill every time we forewent the container or brought our own? Using less will cut the cost for the university (remember all of the budget cuts and our tuition increases?) and we wouldn’t be filling the landfills with products that take hundreds of years to decompose.

In the meantime, please use the recycling facilities that we have available to us now. They are not difficult to use and it takes all of five minutes to haul your garbage and recycling down and sort it out. Kudos also to Cheryl Heatwole, Emily Benner and Rachel Sims for beginning the composting process for the cafeteria. It is much appreciated.

Kiara can be reached at kiara.yoder@emu.edu for further discussion.