Author: The Occidental Weekly Editorial Board
This week, Occidental is observing Earth Day by not offering plastic bags in the Marketplace or Cooler in order to increase student awareness of the harm the bags cause to the environment. Each week, students use 2,400 plastic bags, an alarming and unnecessary sum. The Earth Day campaign is both noble and reasonable, but there is no good reason that Occidental should not follow the lead of cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles in banning plastic bags permanently.
Campus Dining should consider the economic and environmental costs of having free and unlimited plastic bags for students, keeping in mind that these bags often end up in the trash rather than the recycling bin in which they belong. While Campus Dining does offer reusable corn-based bags for purchase, more could be done. Much like the current eco-friendly to-go containers that are offered in the Marketplace, Campus Dining should consider creating a sustainable trade-in bag system where students can take away reusable bags and return them when done.
Alternatively, either the college or a student with Sustainability Fund might make a large investment to provide each student with a sustainable bag, like what has done before with water bottles.
In Fall 2010, incoming first-years were each provided with a reusable metal water bottle to encourage elimination of plastic water bottles. And while the Marketplace and Cooler still carry plastic water bottles, students are often seen carrying their reusable bottles, filled and saving a later trip to the trash can.
But even this progress stands to be improved. In the Cooler, an entire level of their refrigerators is still devoted to an unnecessary amount of oversized plastic water bottles. The inevitable truth is that, provided with a choice between sustainable and convenient, some will still choose the convenient option. That is why programs like “Bring Your Own Bag,” which make the sustainable option the only option, are more successful than simply encouraging environmentally-conscious choices.
By eliminating the wasteful plastic bags altogether, students will adapt and therefore become more sustainable.
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