As far as going green goes, Dining Services lives by the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
On Monday, Dining Services, in a joint venture with the Resident Life Department, renewed its efforts to reduce the amount of disposable cups on the campus by giving away 20 oz. plastic water bottles to any student with a campus meal plan, said Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple. Students will receive a discount of $0.20 each time they use the bottle.
The new bottles mark the second time in two years that Dining Services has attempted a program like this, after handing out plastic mugs in 2007. After the initial success of the mugs, student interest declined as the number of refills sold three months later was less than a third of the number sold during the mugs’ first week of use. Officials from dining services hoped the sporty bottles would hold more appeal with students, Hipple said.
“We felt that students would be much more willing to carry around a water bottle then the mugs,” Hipple said.
Hipple also said he hoped the plastic bottles would be more effective in reducing the number of disposable water bottles students throw away.
Even after the discount, however, the bottles cost significantly more to fill up than the mugs of the same size distributed in 2007. The mugs cost $0.99 to fill up with any drink, while the bottles cost $1.29 with fountain drinks and more for expensive beverages like juice and milk.
The bottles are not well-suited for hot drinks, unlike the mugs that could contain both hot and cold beverages.
“It’s good in theory, but people probably are not going to end up using it that much,” sophomore chemical engineering major Matt Grossbach said. “I’m looking around, and I don’t see anyone using them right now.”
The program was also attempted in 2002 and 2003. Including 2007, each year the use of the mugs dropped significantly after several weeks as students either lost them or found them to be too much of a hassle to clean and carry around.
In 2007, the total number of refills given out between Oct. 7 and Dec. 8 of that year was less than 3 percent of the number of Styrofoam cups that department purchased during the same time period, Dining Services told The Diamondback in 2007.
“I had three in my room last year, but I never took any of them to the Diner, I just used them in my dorm,” sophomore government and politics major Laura Getty said.
Many students liked the new Nalgene-like design of the reusable bottles better than last year’s mugs.
“It will be good for taking to class, I definitely think I will use it more [than the mugs],” Getty said.
Some students said that the mugs were more user-friendly than the new bottles.
“These are more of a sports bottle, once you take the top off, they’re a lot harder to drink out of [than the mugs],” Alex Shemonski, a sophomore electrical engineering major who said he had used one of the mugs handed out last year until he lost it.
Others, however, did not see themselves cutting out Styrofoam for the new bottles, regardless of design.
“Maybe if I’m in my dorm and I decide to go to the Diner, I’ll use it, but I’m not going to carry it around with me all day,” sophomore pre-nursing major Kerry O’Connell said.
To continue implementation of its green goals, Dining Services has also planned to remove all Styrofoam from the dining halls by the beginning of next semester.
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