It seems impossible to walk into a building on campus without being reminded of the ridiculous amounts of waste that we, the student body, produce. Such waste includes the overheated dorms, the lights that stay on in the fitness center well past closing time, the almost completely uneaten meals on the conveyor belts in the dining halls. The most easily identifiable offender — the paper coffee cups offered in Commons and McEwen — may become less visible over the coming semester.
According to Bon Appetit, Hamilton Students use about 24,500 cups each week, a number that seems massive to those of us (myself included) who have trouble comprehending how only taking a cup or two a day leads to such massive, wanton waste. As any environmental studies or economics major will tell you, the Tragedy of the Commons theory, which dictates that any communal resource will be depleted quickly due to the inherent selfishness of humanity, rings true in the case of the non-recyclable paper cups distributed in Hamilton’s two dining halls. It is hard to conceptualize nearly 25,000 cups in the trash as you rush to fill your cup before your 9 AM class. But with a campus consisting of nearly 2,000 students who are all running on very little sleep and an unhealthy dependence on caffeine, the numbers begin to add up.
These figures beg the question: why are these paper cups not recyclable? Paper is generally recyclable, right? Well, great news for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch be- cause the cups we use here on campus are coated in plastic, and therefore have to go in the trash. In a truly bizarre example of unnecessary wastefulness, the plastic tops for the cups can (and should) be recycled, while the cups themselves cannot.
However, this week ceramic dining hall mugs were reintroduced after a several year-long hiatus. Originally, ceramic mugs were removed from the dining halls because of the student body’s pen- chant for bringing the mugs back to their dorms. So, the reappearance of the mugs is both an effort by Bon Appetit to decrease the amount of waste produced by Commons and McEwen, as well as a vote of confidence that students will resist the urge to steal the new mugs.
So now, we as a campus enter a trial period. In a poetic dichotomy, we either have to resist the childish, entitled urge to steal ceramic mugs from Commons, or reconcile ourselves with the childish, entitled, and excessive use of paper cups.
As a cynic, I am not hopeful. I am only a freshman, but I have already learned to never underestimate the ability of students to care exclusively about themselves. I do not say this from a place of judgement, for I as well drink several cups of coffee out of those paper cups if I forget my thermos in my room, or even if I am simply too lazy to wash it out each night.
Nonetheless, I would be elated to see a change in student behavior as a result of the presence of new ceramic mugs. It is hard to believe that coffee cups are now the barometer of student respon- sibility.
We are supposed to be the next great generation? God save us all.
