Food fight!

University of Northern Iowa students who frequent Dashes and Café on the Way may want to start carrying an extra item with them. In early -to mid-February, a one- to two-week competition between Dashes and Café on the Way will encourage students to bring their own reusable cups, instead of the paper cups provided. The competition is  part of the sophomore Presidential Scholar think tank project on sustainability.

"Our goal as a think tank project is to reduce the amount of waste on campus and do that in a positive way so students are excited about it and can see the benefits of it," said Beth Monnier, a sophomore English and economics double major and member of the think tank.

During the competition, students who bring their own cup to Dashes or Café on the Way will be eligible to enter their name in a drawing for a prize. A scoreboard outside each of the dining facilities will indicate how many students used their own cup out of the total meals purchased for the day. The dining facility with the highest percentage of students using reusable cups at the end of the competition will win, and the student whose name is drawn from that facility's raffle will win the grand prize. A name will also be drawn from the runner-up facility for a smaller prize.

Details, including an exact date and grand prize, are still being determined.

"I'm hoping this challenge is a fun way to get people more in the thought process ... it's changing your thought process more than really affecting whether you can or can't do things," said Carol Fletcher, assistant director of residential dining and collaborator on the project.

On-campus students are encouraged to bring the purple reusable water bottles they were given when they moved into the residence halls at the beginning of the year. However, the kind of water bottle allowed is not limited as long as it is of reasonable size.

Tallying of the cups will occur Monday through Friday in the morning and after the lunch shift. If a student were to purchase four meals at once and brought four reusable cups, the student's name would be placed in the raffle four times. However, if a student brought two cups for only one meal, the name would only be counted once.

Monnier sees the competition as benefiting the university by reducing the amount of waste and cost that is associated with paper cups.

"Also, it's more practicing  stewardship and building awareness," Monnier said. "So maybe if someone's like, ‘Oh, I used my reusable water bottle and that wasn't so bad; maybe I'll recycle my paper,' or maybe they'll do something else on campus. We want it to be kind of a snowball effect."

Fletcher hopes for a response similar to the one for the dining centers' tray-free experiment held for a short period of time a few years ago. According to Fletcher, while some students thought it would be difficult, they found the project was easier than expected.

"We are so excited that it's a student group (organizing the event) and that they're excited about it, because that always, from my perspective, helps other students get more excited about it," Fletcher said.

As a follow-up to the project, 40 volunteers will be given clamshell containers to use when they go to Dashes or Café on the Way. The volunteers will be surveyed before and after their use of these containers to determine how it changed their perspective on recycling. The think tank group will then calculate how much plastic was saved from the use of the clamshells depending on how frequently they were used.

Jessica Moon, director of the university honors program, said she believes the students in the think tank will gain "a new perspective on teamwork and problem-solving."

"I know they will have a successful outcome in the end, but my greater priority is what they learn about decision-making and execution along the way," Moon said.

The students decided on this project after a series of events. The sophomore presidential scholars were split into two think tank groups and had to formulate a project that would help the Cedar Falls or UNI community. First, the groups had to pick an overarching issue they would focus on.

"We debated a lot about what we wanted to do," said Megan Kingery, a sophomore music and Spanish double major and member of the think tank.

The group finally decided on the issue of sustainability.

Monnier credits a class the group took in their freshman year to jump starting the project.  The class — Enhancing Vision for a Sustainable World — gave the students background information on sustainability, such as what UNI and other campuses were doing to reduce their waste.

"... Since we have a good background in that now, that definitely gave us some incentive to do (a project on sustainability) again this year, because you might as well start with something you already know," Monnier said.

The group identified more categories within the topic of sustainability and did research on gardens and compost.

"We finally narrowed it down to the plastic waste in the to-go facilities as something we thought we could have the biggest impact on," Kingery said.

Monnier echoed this idea, saying they thought it "would be the most effective and time-efficient method for reducing waste."

The group sent out a survey to see how many students utilized Dashes and Café on the Way and how much plastic each student used on a normal trip to see if there was really an issue to work on.

"It was a little rough going at the beginning because we were pretty split about what issue to decide on, but I think now we've come together a lot and it's going well," Kingery said.