When students walked to the Henderson Campus Center to go to lunch or class on Wednesday, Sept. 23, a surprising sight greeted them on the Gator Quad: hundreds of gleaming metal sporks impaled in the lawn. The Office of Sustainability’s #SporkTheQuad event was responsible for the view. Students were able to pick up sporks on their way in and out of the campus center, learning sustainability facts from volunteers who handed them out.
According to the Office of Sustainability, Allegheny College throws away 300,000 single-use utensils each year, which amounts to one full dumpster or $16,000 of waste. The Office of Sustainability aims not only to do its part to educate students on the waste they produce, but also to encourage them to be more mindful of the environment and how they interact with it in a fun and engaging way.
Director of Sustainability Kelly Boulton, ’02, said that she hopes the unconventional method of sporking the quad to spread awareness of the amount of single-use utensil waste on campus will impact students.
“There’s a lot of single-use stuff and we don’t think about it because we use it and then you get rid of it a little bit at a time,” Boulton said. “If you really start to think about the impact of all those times adding up and all the students on campus adding up, it’s a lot.”
Hazel Ammons, ’25, works as a student employee in the Office of Sustainability. Ammons spent the lunch hours standing outside of the campus center announcing the free sporks to students passing by. The sporks, sticking up from the ground like flowers, were labeled with information about waste on campus. Signs featuring popular dining staff, like Yvonne Longstreth, and pop culture characters, like Dwight Schrute from “The Office,” encouraged students to take a spork for themselves.
“We’re trying to reduce single use plastics, and that includes plastic silverware,” Ammons said. “If everyone had their own reusable metal spork and was using it and washing it at every meal, we could really cut that number down.”
In a previous event in 2017, students were directly handed sporks by the Office of Sustainability and were encouraged to use them in between meals. Boulton compares this to efforts to reduce single-use cup and plate usage in McKinley’s Dining Hall and Brooks Dining Hall. The green box program, in particular, is one way students and faculty are able to reduce the amount of plates used in dining halls while taking food to go with them.
Although the college’s current single-use plates and utensils are bioplastic that are composted and recycled, Boulton said their usage still continues the pattern of single-use items that are not sustainable long term. Those who pick up and use the sporks can more easily commit to sustainability.
Boulton hopes this event will inspire students to think intently about the waste they produce not just now, but in the future. After the previous event, students would recognize each other using the sporks and connect based on their shared goal for sustainability on campus.
Boulton said that, after the #SporkTheQuad event, if students are seen using the sporks, they’ll be caught “sporking” and will be given a sticker in appreciation by the Office of Sustainability.
“We try to reduce some of the inputs and outputs as far as sustainability goes, and waste is a huge output,” Ammons says. “We produce so much of it that we don’t even realize what we’re producing. Plastic silverware and even paper plates all feed into that. The more we can reduce that usage and output, the better.”
The Office of Sustainability is optimistic that students will be more willing to be thoughtful about their usage going forward.
“Oftentimes, we talk about sustainability as what we can’t do and what you can’t have,” Boulton said. “But, honestly, this is an awesome spork. You can have this spork and you can use it all the time. It actually performs better than most of the disposable utensils.”
As students use their sporks, Boulton encouraged them to post photos online and to use the hashtag #SporkTheQuad while tagging @alleghenysustainability.