Eco-Reps RecycleMania Party

Guess what February and March are! Why, yes, they are the two months in which 600+ colleges across the US and Canada participate in a competition called RecycleMania! The winner is the school that recycles the most/wastes the least. According to the people who I've talked with in the Penn Environment/Facilities department, Penn came 5th out of 8th in a competition with the Ivies. However, does that mean that

1. We don't recycle that much

or

2. We don't use that much recycleable stuff/plastic bottles in the first place?

I've become skeptical of pretty much every statistic now... even RCTs! I don't NOT believe, but I'm starting to have qualms about any statistic presented to me, because in some way another, it can be interpreted differently. Confounding factors will never cease to exist.

Anyway, my college house had an Eco Reps party and I don't think any of the stuff we bought was environmentally friendly. They included Frito-Lay brand foods, sodas, Papa John's pizzas, Jimmy John's sandwiches and Insomnia cookies. Oh, and a fruit platter.

Within 30 minutes, perhaps 30 or 50[?] people devoured all 15 large pizzas, all 30 cookies, a whole party tray of [50?] sandwiches, and most of the fruit.

[Image: Insomnia Cookies puts its cookies in pizza boxes. Funny how they don't advertise themselves.]

As a member of the bureaucratic Eco Reps group, I think that this was quite a liberal party we threw. Actually, who am I kidding? This was the cliche party that every club can produce, and it's exactly what they expected from us. They/Penn didn't expect a party with sustainable food. They didn't expect local/slow food. Nuh uh.

One triumph was that Papa John's gave us a zillion red plastic plates and a huge stack of napkins and I hid them. People in my dorm house are conditioned to bring their own plates/utensils, so generally people DO follow that rule. I may be over-reacting, but I saved two plates.

I'm sure you think that I was really mean for hiding the plates, but the whole point of this party was to educate people about not being wasteful. One person asked me where the plates were and I said that she had to get her own reusable plate, because the whole point of this was to raise awareness of all the waste we generate [considering we ditched basically every other point of being non-wasteful in transportation of food/ingredients, and being thrifty...]. She seemed kinda irked but ... hey, free pizza comes with your own plate. Or no plate at all. Really, is it necessary to get a plate for lukewarm pizza?

[The pizza was quite nice; I've never had Papa John's pizza before. Even the olives weren't overwhelmingly salty! The vegetable sandwich from Jimmy John's was kind of boring though, despite the fact that there were bean sprouts in it [which were nice...]. Greek Lady sandwich platters are much better for vegetarians, as there was onion and tomato in the one I had last time when my dorm house ordered Greek Lady sandwiches]

The party was a success, the message of recycling got through, but this was all trite and typical. There was no LOCAL, no SEASONAL [watermelon is not seasonal in February...], no organic/pseudoorganic/farmer/non certified but close to the certification [did you know that certification costs money? Do you know how much that sucks for farmers who actually make real organic stuff, but don't have enough profit to certify it?], no VEGETARIAN/LOW ON THE FOOD CHAIN, no PASSION TO SPREAD THE MESSAGE THAT WE ARE MESSING UP THE WORLD.

[Image: I somehow took a really interestingly tinted picture.]

In retrospect, however, the best way to make the environment better is to just kill off everyone. "But, what about the world for future human generations?!" Okay, kill off all the people who can't reproduce anymore, and the ones who use up all of Medicare and are responsible for the Dept. of Defence.

The point is that, despite not really making a really environmentally "friendly" party, anything we do is pretty bad for the environment.

In terms of waste, instead of each of the 30-50 people obtaining food in disposable styrofoam/plastic/ceramic/paper containers covered in plastic bags [think food carts], we fed them all using 15 to-be-recycled pizza boxes and a few to-be-recycled plastic containers.

[THR]ICE CREEEEAAAAAM!

In an attempt to make its environment more swanky, 1920 Commons has decided to refurnish and update its locations of foods. The fruit bar has moved to where the nacho bar used to be. The nacho bar and soup have moved to where the fruit bar used to be. They're both displayed rather prettily, and they look less cluttered.

The bread section has switched with the dessert section; now, the dessert has a black-table backdrop rather than a white-table blackdrop, which I suppose more elegant too.

They've also stocked Original flavoured ["Original" has been a flavour for a long time] soymilk rather than Vanilla [read: sugar] flavoured soymilk.

The ice-cream bar now has to share space with the waffle maker [which used to be next to the soup, because it, of course, was completely logical to put a waffle maker next to the chowder...], but I think this makes college kids squeal with happiness. In addition, there is now caramel syrup, marmalade [labelled "pineapple"], strawberry jam, chocolate syrup, SHREDDED COCONUT, and walnuts in syrup stacked in sticky containers near the ice cream.

This change took me quite by surprise.

I ate at Hill today and there was no noticeable change there...so why did Commons decide to ka-boom and polish everything?

It did seem to make people happy, especially the ice cream area.

That was Tuesday night. Yesterday night and tonight at dinner, Commons had moved stuff around again; the dessert, nacho, fruit and soup had all switched places. Commons also has delicious pre-packaged breadsticks from NJ, even though they claim to be "Real Italian" or something...

I think they're trying to test out where the best placement is for... themselves [i.e. best places to put food without having a huge mess to clean up from us students dropping stuff]? For us [so that we walk more and use more Calories]? It's true that changes make people more interested and more likely to lurk longer/more frequently. That's why companies always make new flavours of stuff, and restaurants always have different "FEATURED!" or "SPECIAL!!" items.

At the beginning of my first semester here [what?! Second semester already!?!?], I figured, hey, if I eat ice cream using a cone, I will "save" a bowl and a spoon. That means that energy will be saved, because dishwashers won't have to use energy to clean the bowl and spoon, and chemically cleaned water won't have to be pumped and used and re-cleaned.

However, my logic was pretty bad because the cone itself took a TON OF WATER AND ENERGY to make, not to mention package and transport! Think about it.

The cone: grow flour and other ingredients on a field from a seed to plant. Pick plants, process them, cook/shape them.

The packaging [in a giant cardboard box, with plastic wrapping, perhaps]: grow trees, cut trees, process trees, shape card, fold/glue/staple card.

Transportation from factory to dining hall: more energy.

Now, if we used a ceramic bowl and metal spoon [not disposable!], the energy to create the spoon and ceramic bowl would be invested evidently [synthesising, packaging, transporting], but once it is in the dining hall, every use only uses, say, 1L of water and a bit of dish soap. It is much less than the energy used to synthesise a wafer cone.

However, a paper/plastic [and, please NO, styrofoam] disposable container would be the same as using a wafer cone, although I think that the wafer cone would be more energy efficient because the wafer cone is digested, leaving no trace of garbage.

The digested cone is excreted as heat, water, and in poop, perhaps, and consumed by bacteria and someone cycled back into the soil or water.

So, I suppose the way to conserve the most energy in this circumstance would be

1. Consume less of everything and stop wasting stuff!

2. Use a reusable bowl and spoon.

3. If there are no reusable utensils, use the wafer cone.

4. As the last resort, use disposable utensils [oh how I dislike them!]

Hello College Food!

Yeah, college food. As in, Allegro Pizza and Insomnia Cookies. The stuff that keeps college kids going! [Apparently.] For Eco-Reps we decided to order this stuff... so much for sustainability, healthy, or fair trade ingredients. Eh.

I guess the bright side is that it's not Pizza Hut and Pillsbury...

The cookie was a really normal chocolate chip cookie, except that it was cloud shaped [yes, that can be said of any cookie, really.] and had a larger proportion of chocolate to cookie. Nothing too special... so I don't really know why everyone is so obsessed with Insomnia Cookies. Perhaps it's because they can deliver really late at night, and they originated on Penn's campus. It was a really delicious cookie, evidently. For $1 at night when you're desperate and sad and starving, I suppose it's great, although usually I don't like to eat too late at night.

The brownie was really mediocre and did not taste too chocolately. This is why they're called Insomnia COOKIES...

Allegro pizza...This is the first pizza store, apart from Pizza Box, that has rectangular/square shaped pizza, which is AMAZING. I had two slices of pizza without cheese since I really didn't feel like eating cheesy pizza... so it was just tomato sauce and crust. The crust was pretty good; it was between thick and thin crust. Actually, I'd say it was more thin crust pizza, but not crunchy crust. I can't say much about the topping except that it was tomatoey and didn't taste fake, which was pretty good. I think this was for the vegans in the crowd, although, ironically, there are no vegans on my section of Eco Reps. Actually, there aren't many vegetarians either...

I don't think the club is actually that concerned about the environment, really. It's all chatter. It lacks action.