Honors dorm cafe big on recycling, composts
Concerning the letter in Friday’s paper about Starbucks, I completely understand Julie Slivka’s concerns, but would like to make two crucial points known:
1. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that students may not know about. In the Honors Cafe alone, we compost food parts (i.e., peels, skins, tips, etc.) and coffee grinds that are collected daily by Sustainable Carolina. Old sandwiches, baked goods and Simply-to-Go items are donated to a local vet home after their shelf life for the students. We recycle all cardboard boxes and milk gallons. This semester we have begun to collect receipts student do not want and recycle those as well.
2. We are limited to using Starbucks cups for Starbucks drinks. I understand the author’s point that every student who buys a coffee or espresso beverage is basically a walking advertisement, but our location on campus does not force this upon students. We happily allow coffee refills into a personal cup at $1.29, which is about 40 cents less than the price of a small cup of coffee. In addition, we allow students to use their own cups for hot tea and espresso drinks. Upon various occasions have I been asked to do this, and every single time we say yes.
I hope this can be conveyed to other students as some of these events, especially the compost collections, go on all around campus. Since all food service is run by Sodexo, these actions are done by Sodexo in correspondence with local organizations. The drinks served are recipes and ingredients made by Starbucks, but the eco-friendly aspects of campus food service are done by Sodexo.
— Nora Banaszek, second-year biomedical engineering student