USC saves 1 million plastic bottles from landfill

The University announced in a November USC News article that it prevented 32 tons of plastic, or the equivalent of one million bottles, from being sent into landfills. 

The ban on single-use bottles marks a milestone for USC’s “aggressive” sustainability framework called “Assignment: Earth.” The plan states the University’s mission to reach carbon neutrality by 2025 and zero waste by 2028. To reach the latter goal, the University introduced its elimination of single-use plastic bottles from all of its campuses at the start of July 2022, a process that involved negotiating with The Coca-Cola Company to only supply non-plastic products, placing more hydration stations around the campuses and removing plastic bottles from vending machines and selling points — such as those at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The results of these efforts have left Ellen Dux, the associate director of USC’s Office of Sustainability, “over the moon” with what she considers to be “such a huge win” for the University.

“To think that in just a couple months’ time with a lot of hard work on behalf of the whole Trojan community, [where] everybody is doing their part to make this win happen, that we could take a million bottles out of that slipstream is incredible,” Dux said.

For Isabella Pangilinan, a junior majoring in environmental studies and member of the Environmental Student Assembly, the change in policy has been noticeable — especially in stores on campus where single-use plastic packing for beverages has been replaced with aluminum cans.

“I think in the past few years, USC has really done a lot in terms of sustainability, especially with the inauguration of President Carol Folt … sustainability was one of her top priorities,” Pangalinan said.

Dux said she agrees with Pangilinan’s assessment of Folt, saying that the President is being an “enormous champion” for sustainability at USC.

“I recall very clearly when she first came to USC before COVID even started and was [not] talking about low-hanging fruit or quick wins because they were all going to be big lifts … one of the first ones was [that] we’ve got to get a hold of plastic,” Dux said.

Plastic has lower reuse rates than aluminum, so the metal has been heralded by environmentalists as a greener alternative. Aluminum cans also create less ocean waste, and recycling plastic is a more complex process, according to Reuters. Cans have 68% recycled content on average compared to just 3% for plastic in the United States. 

Single-use plastics, or disposable plastics, are used most commonly in bottles, wrappers, straws and bags. However, through their energy-intensive manufacturing process and improper disposal, their usage in packaging has come under scrutiny across large global markets. 

The European Union banned all single-use plates and straws, and various states in the U.S. like Connecticut have introduced restrictive legislation. As only 9% of plastic in the U.S. is recycled, single-use plastics continue to create significant ecological destruction because of their non-biodegradable nature.

In an informal survey conducted by the Daily Trojan with 36 random students traveling through McCarthy Quad on Thursday afternoon, all of whom had been at the University for at least a year, two-thirds said they did not notice any change in the use of single-use plastics on campus. 

However, some of the 10 respondents that noticed a reduction in the use of single-use plastics over the last year said they noted changes like compostable containers and coffee cups the University is now serving at Everybody’s Kitchen, and that retailers at the University asked customers whether they wanted plastic cutlery with their purchase go cutlery-free.

For the University to be at the forefront of waste aversion, in a space where universities like UCLA have launched their own zero waste campaigns, Dux says that there will have to be a myriad of one-off deals aside from the one made with The Coca-Cola Company. 

“You will see a lot of schools, much like us, [that] have a zero waste goal out there … a lot of them get to like 60 or 70% waste aversion and then you notice a real [drop-off],” Dux said.

Meanwhile, Dux said that there has been huge progress over the course of a few years. 

“It’s going to take a very concrete roadmap, with all hands on deck, to figure out how we go from that 50% to 90% in the next six years,” Dux said.

Dux said she hopes to see further progress in this direction but said that the use of plastics is not the only way the University is trying to improve its footprint. In its goal to turn itself carbon neutral by 2025 as part of the larger “Assignment: Earth” framework, the University also agreed to a 20-year deal with Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the fall to obtain 25% of its electricity from solar-generated power from farms in Mojave. Pangilinan said the Office of Sustainability is also setting up a sustainability “hub” for faculty and students in the Student Union. 

“If you look at Assignment: Earth, you’ll see lots of specific programs and initiatives about this but making sure that from the first day, students show up on campus and that we are educating sustainable Trojans to eventually be sustainable global citizens,” Dux said.