Dining initiative fosters reusability

It’s not every day that your environmental homework comes to life.

Two weeks ago, Duke Dining Services first distributed 250 reusable clamshell containers to students, faculty and staff at The Great Hall. Proposed by students in a Duke environmental sciences class, clamshell containers are made of the reusable plastic polypropylene and are designed to replace the disposable containers currently used at the Great Hall. 

But as of this week, Dining Services officials were unable to provide specific information regarding the effectiveness of the program, such as the amount of trash reduced as a result of this initiative. The data may be reported later this month, however, at which point administrators can expand the program as they deem effective.

“The goal was to facilitate a transition to a more environmentally friendly container alternative,” said senior Katherine Rock, a student involved in the project. “That’s what makes it more exciting—that they took our recommendation seriously.”

The program was funded by a $4,800 grant from Green Grant Fund, which will cover the cost of 700 containers, said Tammy Hope, Duke Dining Services manager of quality assurance. The first 200 containers were given away for free, and all subsequent clamshells cost $5 on FLEX, food points, credit or cash, according to the Dining Services Web site. 

Program participants receive a key chain that can be traded in for a clamshell container when purchasing food from The Great Hall. Students must rinse their containers before returning them to large depositories near the cash registers, at which point they are put into the facility’s dishwasher for further sanitizing. 

“What we’re hoping is that students will have the environmental effect to recognize the harmfulness of [using disposable to-go containers] and will feel inclined to use these clamshells even though it requires them to rinse the clamshells and bring them back,” said junior Kirsten Moy, director of publicity for Environmental Alliance. EA helped publicize the program.

Although only currently available at the Great Hall, the clamshells may be making an appearance at other on-campus eateries in the future. But Hope said a current program constraint is consumer participation and the availability of sufficient dishwashing facilities. 

“Our goal is to expand [the program] on campus,” Hope said. “Right now we’re looking at The Refectory and The Loop.”

The idea of clamshells was born last year in the “Food and Energy” course, taught by Charlotte Clark, visiting professor and associate director of education and training at the Nicholas School of the Environment. Students researched different ways to make on-campus dining more eco-friendly, presenting their ideas to various experts on campus at the end of the semester. 

Five students examined the use of disposable boxes in the Great Hall, discovering that these containers create an enormous amount of waste. According to their report, many students use the disposable option even when dining in the facility, as they prefer the containers for tossing salads. 

The research team considered a variety of different alternatives­—ranging from bagasse, a mixture of bamboo and sugarcane, to styrofoam—and chose one solution to present to Dining Services. 

“We were all a little skeptical at first about a reusable program at Duke,” Rock said.

However, some students said they ultimately favored the clamshell approach over recyclable materials, because it would be more difficult to enforce the recyclable materials program. Recyclables must be cleaned of contents before going in the recycling bin to prevent contamination, said senior Sehhyun Lee, a group member. 

The research group was inspired after seeing success in a similar program in dining halls at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.