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Sustainability Committee Works to Eliminate Single-Use Plastics on Campus

December 17, 2021

By Avery McKitrick, Sustainability Coordinator

 

Plastics. They’re in our clothes, our food, our parks, and our oceans. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] ), in 2018, the United States generated more than 35 million tons of plastic waste. Only about 3 million tons of that waste was recycled. For comparison, the U.S. only produced 390,000 tons of plastic waste in 1960 —that’s an 8,800% increase.

A portion of these plastics are called “single-use plastics,” or “SUP [Single-Use Plastics] s.” Single-use plastics are defined by their one-time use followed by disposal. Examples of SUPs include disposable cups, drinking straws, plastic food packaging, plastic beverage bottles, and plastic shopping bags. These plastics are especially harmful for the environment because they are produced in large quantities and are difficult to recycle since they are often mixed with other materials or made of a plastic that is too low-quality to acquire useful material from.

It’s clear that single-use plastics are not an issue to be taken lightly. These were the thoughts of the UT Dallas Sustainability Committee, who had an idea in the fall of 2020 to write a proposal to reduce our plastic footprint.

A little more than one year ago, the UT Dallas Sustainability Committee, which consists of UT Dallas students, staff, and faculty members, began work on a now-sixteen-page proposal for the gradual phasing out of single-use plastics on UTD campus. The framework for this proposal comes from the Post Landfill Action Network (PLAN [Post Landfill Action Network] ), and includes four major tenets:

  1. Establishing a Plastic-Free Task Force
  2. Eliminating all Non-Essential Single Use Plastics
  3. Developing a Procurement Policy for Long-Term Elimination and
  4. Implementing Proper Collection and Management of Non-Disposable Items

The Sustainability Committee hopes to use collaboration with relevant on-campus departments and consensus building to bring the proposal to life and to establish UT Dallas as a leader in the sustainability field. If UT Dallas were to sign the PLAN [Post Landfill Action Network] pledge, we would be the first in the UT system and the state of Texas to do so.

There is precedent at out of state colleges and universities for the implementation of a phase out of single-use plastics, many of whom have found great successes with their respective projects. UC Santa Barbara has been plastic-free single 2015, UC Berkley signed a comprehensive pledge in 2020, and Iowa State has implemented compostable carryout containers. These universities are considered our sustainability peers according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE [Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education] ).

At UT Dallas, students, staff and faculty have shown interest and support in a proposal phasing out single-use plastics. Two campus petitions have been pushed out gauging interest in this proposal, with a little more than one thousand supporting signatures in total as of October 2021. In December, Student Government passed a resolution in support of the Sustainability Committee’s single use plastic strategy to make UTD a signatory to the Break Free from Plastic Pledge put forth by PLAN [Post Landfill Action Network] , with support from Staff Council, Academic Senate, and Graduate Student Assembly requested. The Sustainability Committee hopes to bring this proposal forth to UT Dallas higher leadership in spring 2022.

To support this proposal and other efforts to phase out single-use plastics on UT Dallas campus, sign the petition. You can also follow @utd_plasticfree on Instagram.

 

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