Make a Change

Every few days you might be heading to the supermarket to purchase some cold cuts from the deli. If you observe how much plastic is used in this process, it is really shocking. The meat is placed on plastic when it is cut and then it gets put into a plastic bag. At home, you might (or might not) take the meat out of the plastic bag and put it into a container for your fridge. Have you ever thought about bringing the container to the deli itself? It works great and you can easily avoid all the single-use plastic. Just ask the staff at the deli to put your items directly into your container. They can deduct the weight of the container on the scale in advance and stick the price tag on top of the lid. Once you get home you can directly place your own re-usable container into your fridge.

While a lot of people carry around a re-usable mug, it is much less so with cutlery. A ton of single-use forks, knives and spoons get thrown out, in particular with catered events. If you order catering from UBC for meetings and committees, you will get a lot of cups and cutlery. For large events this will be hard to avoid. However, this happens even if you do internal events in your own office/department. People grab the single-use cutlery because they tend to forget their own cutlery that most people have at their desk anyway. As so often, waste is created based on convenience. Let’s make an effort to encourage colleagues to use their own cutlery, e.g. when we send out event invitations. A simple reminder to bring cutlery could be enough to help re-use waste.

Let’s start with the easiest thing to reduce single use plastic which just goes into the landfill. If you bring your own mug, you not only save the planet, but money as well. Most coffee shops on campus deduct 10-15 cents when you bring your re-usable container!