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Sister Monica Okon doesn't consider her recent lunch at Omaha's College of St. Mary a miracle, but she does see it as an opportunity to perform an environmentally moral act.
The nun scooped her mashed potatoes and salad into a reusable, biogradable to-go container that she planned to wash and return to the cafeteria the next day.
Plastic foam, that hard-to-recycle enemy of the environment often used for to-go containers, is now banned in the college's cafeteria. The ban is one of several new green initiatives being pushed by the school's president and supported by a student-led environmental group.
“I am one of those who likes to go green,” said Okon, a nun from Nigeria who is studying in Omaha to become a nurse. “Let's not waste everything we use.”
The College of St. Mary, a predominantly women's Catholic college near 72nd Street and Mercy Road, now requires students buying takeout food in the cafeteria to buy a reusable container for $4 at the college bookstore. The students use the containers and then turn them in at the cafeteria, which washes them and gives the students clean ones.
The idea came from college President Maryanne Stevens, who grew irritated with the amount of plastic foam being thrown away on campus and asked school officials to look into an alternative.
The school's food vendor, Treat America, eventually came up with the plan. The vendor, which works with colleges around the country, told school Vice President Sarah Kottich that no other school it worked with had tried the reusable container approach.
In addition, the College of St. Mary's coffee shop has dropped its java prices for customers who don't use disposable cups. Students who bring their own mugs receive a cup of coffee for 50 cents, a dollar cheaper than the regular price.
The college is also in the third year of a recycling program that was started after student Juana Acosta moved to campus from California. Acosta said it shocked her to watch students throw away easily recyclable materials such as pop cans and plastic cups.
So Acosta started the Green Team, a student group that drove the college to start a comprehensive recycling program. Today, the college throws away so much less trash that it removed one of the giant bins that used to overflow with refuse.
“We're trying to make a difference, even if it's just a little one,” Acosta said. “There's that much less trash going into a landfill somewhere.”
The women's college is far from the only Omaha school focusing on the environment.
The University of Nebraska at Omaha recycled 265,240 pounds of paper, plastic, aluminum and cardboard in the nine months after the school began its “single-stream” recycling program last fall. The program simplifies recycling by allowing students and faculty to throw all their recycled goods into one bin.
UNO also built a section of the engineering building's roof using recycled plastic milk jugs.
And Creighton University has started phasing out cafeteria trays and will ask students to get food one plate at a time. The trayless initiative has been proved to greatly reduce the amount of food wasted by students who pile food on a tray and then throw much of it away.
Okon and Kottich said environmentally friendly changes like the plastic foam ban are simply the right thing to do.
“This is in line with the mission of a Catholic university,” Kottich said. “We believe in caring about not just every person, but also caring about the Earth, too.”
Contact the writer:
444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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