Raul Leon (Dec 16, 2021)
Cerritos College is a community college in Norwalk, CA with an enrollment of about 19k students.
The dream for our Break Free From Plastic campaign came from Salvador Uribe, the former president and creator of the Geography Club at Cerritos College. He started the campaign by connecting with different department boards and with organizations that would lead us with the best steps to move forward. At the end of Salvador’s time at Cerritos, Covid-19 prevented from meeting with the board. I was then elected as president of the Geography Club and had the option to keep moving this project forward.
This eventually resulted in us writing a seven year plan with the guidance of PLAN, and getting our resolution passed on December 6 by the Board of Trustees with the leadership of Dr. Ryan Goode, Gisselle Delgadillo, and Hector Ledesma, who supported me as I continued with this project.
What inspired me to make this dream a reality is that the issue of plastic affects us in ways that many do not know. I live and grew up in a community infested by these toxic facilities where chemicals used to create plastic are produced. I got involved with East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice before college, a non-profit organization that works on issues that affect our communities. Being involved with them allowed me to realize that these facilities are harmful and toxic, and should not be placed in our backyards.
Being able to help my community by reducing our plastic waste may seem like it will not solve this issue—however, this step could inspire others to take the step. Like my great friend Mark Lopez once said, “Community is what makes things possible.”
At the beginning of this movement, many people closed their doors for Salvador Uribe, making it difficult to keep going. I started this project during the pandemic, and during this time I didn’t have the support to lead something like this.
At this time, our PLAN mentor Young began to advise us on next steps. PLAN was our light in the middle of the darkness! With the help of Young and Algalita, Salvador was first able to begin with this project. Young was there to guide me when I started and gave us a direction to go and feedback on the seven year plan. I appreciate them for being there throughout this whole project and for being patient with all the questions that I had. PLAN is continuing to support us as we begin this new change at Cerritos College. I also appreciate them for supporting me personally through this project and my educational career. This has inspired me to keep working on a change at San Diego State University, where I currently attend.
Another great quote from Mark Lopez is, “So much is decided for our communities, not by our communities.” Our campaign was one of the few times community members were represented and successfully made a change. What made this project special is that everyone involved was impacted by this issue or knew a loved one who was impacted. As a community, we were able to come together and make a resolution and have it approved by the governing board of the institution. I hope to inspire others to keep working collectively for zero-waste systems to be implemented worldwide. I hope that we inspire people to keep working for the betterment for our communities—because we are only trying to breathe.
Baleigh Epperly (Mar 10, 2021)
Marshall University is a public research university in Huntington, WV with an enrollment of about 13k students.
Hey PLAN Community!
My name is Baleigh Epperly (She/ They) and I wanted to take a moment to chat about student power and driving an effort for your campus to break free from plastic! I am a senior in undergrad studying Sociology at Marshall University in West Virginia, the first school to sign the Break Free From Plastic pledge in Appalachia.
Our group is beyond excited that we are the first school in Appalachia to ‘Break Free From Plastic’ and we consider this a huge victory for students and a step toward a more sustainable and livable future. We will be even closer to a more liveable climate if and when more schools follow in the same footsteps we have to make this change. West Virginia is a state that is popularly socially linked with poverty, industry extraction and pollution, low educational attainment and it may be the last state many would expect such a change to happen. However, if you are from here, as I am, you may understand that we run on kinship and we often rely on supporting and being supported by our communities. West Virginians have been resourceful and sustainable for a long time, we are familiar with using and reusing what we have and making it last.
I co-founded a club in 2018 (because there was not an environmental club at our school), and in 2019 we were looking for ways to take action and make a positive sustainable change on our campus. We had been supporting other local campaigns and petitions, but we wanted to start something of our own. We learned through Earth Guardians Org that students banned plastic bottles and other items on their campus and we wanted to try it at our University. We did this with the help from PLAN through both Plastic Free Action Camp in summer 2020 and The Students Taking on Oil and Petrochemicals Program, which started in September 2020.
The most important aspect when launching a campaign is to get students and staff excited and involved in your effort. My group did this by petitioning. We began tabling and canvassing to educate students and staff about the plastic crisis, & gathering signatures of support. One of the most impactful aspects of this campaign was meeting new supporters and seeing their reactions of shock, confusion, and anger to facts and figures about plastic waste and pollution. And then funneling them immediately into action.
Some folks may disagree, but to me, petitioning is not an aggressive or demanding tactic—it simply gives your team the opportunity to talk to other students 1 on 1 and an easy action for new folks to take immediately. This is a great way to bring in more team members and as you gather more signatures; it will provide a concrete data representation of how many students (and staff/ faculty, ask them to sign too) support this effort over time. You may also get more ideas from new supporters on how to better your campaign, or start a coalition to care about other issues on campus.
Our president heard about and saw our petition after we conducted a Brand Audit and he signed the pledge right after he was shown the support behind this initiative we created; and the cost analysis of how much money can be saved in the long run by switching from plastic products to more sustainable ones (paper, compostable, biodegradable, etc.)
Administration of universities always have their own agendas, and the truth often is that they want to be the sole drivers of change because it makes their university and position look better than the rest. The reality is that there would be no university without students, and if we organize together our voices become louder and stronger as a collective; coming together and rallying for change. Your effort may be the final push or initial spark of conversation to get your campus to undertake such a transition. An engaged student body is an empowered one, and engaging peers can be as simple as asking them to sign your petition and share it with their friends. There is so much power in student action.
It is up to us to hold the industries that continue to create single use plastic products accountable, for polluting our planet and causing severe health risks in low income often BIPOC and rural communities, for knowing they are a leading cause in global temperature rise, and for not acting years ago and still to this day; as they have known switches need to be made and alternatives should be more accessible.
Our work as a student club is not done with the signing of the pledge. We have also been working on a social campaign to educate folks about the proposed petrochemical buildout for our state and surrounding states. We tell a cautionary tale of the petrochemical buildout that may be coming to the region that will result in more single-use plastics being produced, more poverty, and more destroyed communities.
Tatum Dyar (Jun 28, 2021)
Bethany College is a private liberal arts college in Bethany, WV with an enrollment of about 700 students.
Hey everyone! My name is Tatum Dyar (She/Her), and I recently graduated from Bethany College in West Virginia with B.A.s in Marketing and International Business. Over the past year, I facilitated the development of the college’s complete switch to reusable take-out containers in our dining hall. Financing is often one of the toughest aspects of pushing for sustainable change at the collegiate level, and I hope that this story helps others who are trying to take action at their own schools!
For years I had thought about creating a sustainability club on my campus, but it wasn’t until my senior year that I felt confident enough to take the leap and go for it. During the Fall of 2020, I founded Greener Bethany, our campus’s first ever sustainability club.. I was amazed by the amount of student, faculty, and community support! I also joined the Students Taking on Oil and Petrochemicals program led by PLAN; I was inspired by the student-led movements taking place throughout Appalachia, and I felt that this was the perfect time to make long-lasting change on my own campus.
Greener Bethany decided that our biggest goal for 2020 – 2021 was to switch out the Styrofoam take-out containers in the dining hall. Prior to 2020, Bethany had never offered take-out meals at dining facilities, but due to the pandemic, they had begun offering Styrofoam to-go options to encourage social distancing. As we watched the Styrofoam pile up around campus, we knew that this had to be our objective for the year. We understood that we would eventually need to discuss our plans with the college administration, and we wanted to have quantitative evidence that the student body wanted this change; so, we started an online petition for students to sign in support of switching to alternatives. After gaining around 30% of the student bodies’ signatures in support, I scheduled a meeting with our Provost to talk about our goals. He was very supportive of our mission, and he scheduled a meeting for us for us to present our plans with the appropriate staff and administrators.
Leading up to that meeting, I knew this was going to be the most important moment of the entire project, and there was a lot of research and work to be done in preparation. Research is crucial for any big project, as it shows that you know what you are talking about and put in effort. Using case studies from PLAN’s databases, I put together a rough draft of how the to-go program would work; but, I knew that costs and potential funding would be the biggest points to address in the presentation, as those are typically primary concerns for administrators. I went online and researched different suppliers of Styrofoam and reusable containers in order to develop a cost-benefit analysis between what the school was currently using and potential replacements. Then, with the help of PLAN, I determined a few different grants that could potentially be sources of funding for the project, particularly one for up to $15,000 through the Weeden Foundation. In case this funding didn’t work out, I also researched how much funding our Student Government Association (SGA) had leftover due to travel cutbacks caused by the pandemic. If the Student Government representatives voted yes, we would be able to use this money to pay for the containers if the other funding didn’t work – it is always best to provide multiple options for financing just in case some options don’t work out.
Although it may have been cheaper per unit to purchase compostable or paper containers as replacements, these alternatives are single-use, and they would have needed to be purchased repeatedly. Over time, this would make these containers much more expensive than the singular, initial investment in reusables, which do not need to be repurchased unless they are damaged or lost. In addition to cost, there were other reasons why we were so adamant about using reusables instead of compostable or paper options. For instance, Bethany does not currently have composting facilities available, and developing a composting program that could adequately process the quantity of containers would have been more expensive and complicated than the school was prepared for. This meant that both the compostable and paper options were going to be treated as disposables, and they would still be contributing to the constantly increasing amount of waste in landfills. Reusable containers are ultimately the most financially and environmentally sustainable option, as they can be used for years without increasing costs or adding to the global waste crisis.
I presented all of this information to the Provost, CFO, and dining hall management, and they were beyond impressed by the research and statistics; the manager of the dining hall even said that he would be able to replace the cost of Styrofoam for the year with reusable containers, but he mentioned that we would need additional funding for drying racks, tokens to track containers, and potential renovations to store the reusables. The group agreed that we could move forward with the project as long as there was adequate funding, so I was put in contact with the college grant writer and VP of Advancement to apply for the grant through the Weeden Foundation. We met, along with a couple amazing PLAN staff members, and started working on the application. We set up a budget and schedule for the program and collaborated on the information needed for the grant; by the end of Winter break, we had submitted our final application!
While we waited to hear back about the grant, Greener Bethany started working on a back up plan in case the grant application was denied. We created another petition – this time for students to show support for using excess SGA funds to finance the reusables program. After gaining about 150 signatures, we took it to SGA and requested for the resolution to be voted on by the representatives; the vote was successful, and we were given permission to use the funds as needed! Staying persistent and gaining the support of the student body helped us secure a back up plan for our project – we were beyond excited. Shortly after this big win, we received even more thrilling news – we received the grant from the Weeden Foundation for $15,000!!
Everyone was beyond excited to receive this opportunity to start building green infrastructure on campus. Currently, PLAN and Bethany are working together to implement the new program over the Summer of 2021, and I can’t wait until it is unveiled in the Fall! Overall, the biggest thing that I learned from this project is to not let funding stop you from pushing forward with your goals. There are tons of grants, donors, and other sources of funding available, so make sure to stay persistent and keep trying. Sometimes you have to get creative and build your own support to make it happen, but all the effort is worth it to help lay the foundation for a more sustainable future!
