While SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. officially announced the phasing out of single-use plastics across the system on March 5, it’s a policy SUNY Oswego has been working toward for a while.

A myriad of decisions, including the installation of water-filling stations as early as more than a decade ago and changes in residential dining, have marked action long before the official recommendation.

Items covered in the policy include bags, beverage bottles, food service products, utensils, plastic wrap and packaging films. Kate Spector, SUNY Oswego’s sustainability director, noted this effort involves making a lot of choices to support a sustainable mindset.

“It goes beyond behavior and substituting offerings toward looking for bigger solutions,” Spector said. “Our efforts need to focus on getting away from a linear model of consumption and moving towards a more circular model of reduction and reuse.  In this circular model, there’s no such thing as waste.”

Spector said that Shining Waters lakeside cleanups typically find many single-use plastics such as bottles, cups, straws and bags as a large part of what they collect. 

“Beyond the issues of waste, public health and culture, plastic is derived from fossil fuels,” Spector noted. “The extraction of fossil fuels to create plastic products creates greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change. Moving away from single-use plastics is a crucial step in decarbonizing our campus.”

While some types of plastics are recyclable, a 2018 study by the United States Environmental Protection Agency found that more than 35 million tons of plastics were produced in the U.S. with only 8.7 percent of those plastics recycled. 

Stephen McAfee, assistant vice president and executive director of Auxiliary Services, noted that work on this issue had already begun in 2018-19 when then-President Deborah F. Stanley convened a task force to examine eliminating single-use plastics and improving such practices as recycling and composting in dining services.

“We still use that as our foundation,” McAfee said.

“In residential dining services, prior to the pandemic, we had eliminated all single-use plastics and will complete this transition again this fall. The supply chain difficulties of the past few years did slow our return to this commitment,” McAfee said. “Our current conversations with vendors focus on moving these initiatives ahead with an eye toward fulfilling this goal.”

Part of this also involves discouraging take-out operations from the traditional residential dining centers as that can lead to waste. “For students, making a decision to dine in is actually a way they can help reduce waste and help save the planet,” McAfee noted.

Students currently can –- and are encouraged to, McAfee said –- bring in their own reusable mugs and cups to dining halls to fill with their drink of choice. The fall semester also will bring the elimination of single-use condiment containers for regular use in residential dining, the last plastic products temporarily brought in due to the pandemic.

The College Stores and Retail Dining are also in the process of changing what they do with bags and phasing out sales of balloons beyond their existing inventory.

SUNY-wide initiative

Chancellor King’s announcement earlier this month initiated a uniform policy across the SUNY System to phase out the usage of single-use plastics. The policy will ensure SUNY advances real environmental progress while staying in step with legislation signed by Governor Kathy Hochul encouraging SUNY and CUNY campuses to phase out single-use plastics. 

“Plastics are all around us, and used in so many everyday items from the water bottle you drink from at the gym to the takeout container that holds your lunch,” Chancellor King said. “SUNY’s direct action to make our operations more sustainable complements our research and education to create a better future for all.”

The policy details a staged elimination of single-use plastics designed to take advantage of the continued development of new products and processes for a future plastic-free environment. Items covered in the policy include bags, beverage bottles, food service products, utensils, plastic wrap and packaging films.

This policy will further accelerate SUNY's leadership on sustainability and climate action. SUNY is switching to clean energy, promoting green workforce development programs, spurring research and innovation on climate issues, and encouraging applied learning so that students are prepared for careers in sustainability.

As part of SUNY’s roll-out of the new Single-Use Plastics policy, SUNY is working with the SustainChain public service platform to create a plastic-free solutions hub with access to best-in-class resources on how to achieve this new requirement. World-renowned experts will be sharing their learnings and solution sets for SUNY to leverage.

“Research has shown plastics have a significant, long-lasting and damaging impact on the environment and public health, which is why SUNY is taking this holistic approach to eliminate the usage of single-use plastics,” SUNY Chief Sustainability Officer and Executive Director of Climate Action Carter Strickland said as part of the announcement. “More students than ever are interested in combating the effects of climate change in their lives and, eventually, in their careers. At SUNY, students can translate research and theory into action, as our colleges expand sustainability programs.”  

McAfee also has been part of efforts on the SUNY-wide level, chairing a SUNY Auxiliary Services Association committee on the elimination of single-use plastics. 

“We were able to promote some resources that will allow other universities to implement these changes as well,” McAfee said. “Beyond our campus, we would like to see New York state become the leader in these kinds of changes to positively impact the environment.”

But even as these changes take place in operations, McAfee noted that consumers were an important part of the cycle.

“Consumers are going to have to accept doing things differently where things might change, and also do their part with recycling,” McAfee said. “Unfortunately, we have long lived in a really disposable society, and that’s just not sustainable.”