More than half of students carry lunchboxes to campus

The clichéd image of EUR students having lunch at Starbucks or Tostiworld has proved to be somewhat untrue. According to a poll carried out by the Erasmus Sustainability Hub, about 57 per cent of students bring a lunchbox containing sandwiches to campus.

The Hub examined students’ use of plastic. Its poll showed that half of the more than 700 respondents use disposable cutlery from the on-campus supermarket, and that a third of respondents regularly drink coffee from disposable cups, which are made of paper, but sealed with plastic.

Post Plastic Generation

Naturally, the students associated with the Sustainability Hub seek to reduce plastic use on campus. For this reason, they have established the Post-Plastic Generation working group, which currently consists of five students and seeks to generate attention for this issue.

The working group has already come up with an actual solution to the coffee cup problem: cups which can be borrowed, an idea inspired by the University of Freiburg, among other places. Such cups could be borrowed from several places on campus and returned after use (not necessarily to the same place).