Party-going is a fact of life on college campuses, and with it comes another unavoidable side-effect: morning-after mountains of plastic cups destined to spend generations in landfills. But students at Davidson College’s fraternities and women’s eating houses this spring have changed the picture – adopting corn-based compostable cups for their gatherings.

Now, post-party piles of cups go to Davidson’s Ridge Road composting facility, where they take 4 to 6 weeks to break down – instead of 450 years typical for petroleum based plastic cups the college used to use. Organizers believe it’s the first cup-composting initiative of its kind on a college campus.

The change was part of an effort by the college’s Greek organizations and eating houses – known as the Patterson Court Council – to promote more environmentally friendly practices on the court. The council started its own Sustainability Council in January, and made the cup switch its first project.

Lee Dorsey, a Davidson sophomore, helped lead the effort. He said that in its first three months, the project sold 20,000 compostable cups to fraternities and other organizations at 76 parties. That’s 20,000 cups that didn’t go into a landfill.

Organizers knew they would face obstacles. “Greek organizations are very non-ecologically friendly, and difficult to organize and a project of this size,” Mr. Dorsey said. So he and his colleagues approached the social chairs and leaders of campus groups to gauge the demand and develop a plan.

As a student-run business, they came up with an offering that not only achieved their environmental goals, but which they could sell on economic grounds: Their compostable cups would sell for $5 per 50, instead of the average $5.22 per 50 that most party-planners spend at local groceries, Mr. Dorsey said.

Organizers also made the cups available for purchase as part of the campus party-registration process.

The plan worked, and once the system was in place, “There was not a single party that did not use these cups,” Mr. Dorsey said.

Although the program started as an independent effort by the Patterson Court Council, it has since expanded campus-wide and is now managed by Davidson College’s Dining Services.

What Mr. Dorsey likes best about the initiative is that it’s not mandatory, but it has been a success. For student party planners, “It’s their decision to use it. They learn about sustainability and they’ve made the choice to support sustainability in a way that they haven’t previously,” he said.

When Davidson College seniors and their families gather on the Chambers building lawn Saturday night for the traditional graduation dinner, or swarm the traditional beer truck on Sunday, they’ll be using the compostable cups.

And come fall, Mr. Dorsey said, the cups will be just another routine part of campus life. “It’s institutionalized,” he said. “The framework is in place.”

RELATED LINKS

Davidson.edu, “New Sustainability Initiative Recycles Drink Cups into Compost.” Includes more information about the college’s composting efforts with the cups.

Davidson College Patterson Court promotional banner for the cups, PDF, CLICK HERE>