Research: Reducing Plastic Usage at the Source

Hello fellow Anthropologists! Happy March! 


For the past couple of months I have been conducting a science fair research project that involves reducing plastic usage in my school cafeteria. Within the cafeteria, there is a free water station that offers flavored fruit or cucumber water. Normally, the school offers students single use plastic cups to drink from the station. Additionally, many of the school lunch items (sandwiches, water, hot meals items, and more) rely on single use plastic packaging, and I could not help but wonder why this was the case. I kept asking myself questions as to why plastic is always the first option for my school. Is it because plastic is cheaper? Does plastic packaging follow a certain school lunch safety regulation? Is there a legitimate reason as to why plastic is being used over paper? 

In the cafeteria there are recycling bins; however, recycling plastic everyday is not as beneficial as it may appear to be. From what I gathered at my school and from my prior research, a significant portion of the recycled materials are usually contaminated and not recycled in the end. Not only that, domestically speaking, a majority of the recyclables within the United States do not end up being properly recycled, so I strongly believe that there are major benefits to changing the plastic usage from the start. 

I spoke to the cafeteria staff and a variety of other individuals who help run my school, and I came up with a study that would test paper and plastic cup usage and whether or not an environmental sign would impact usage at all. I not only wanted to study paper and plastic usage, but also wanted to study the preferences that my fellow students have for the different materials and whether or not they can adapt to positive sustainable changes. In my opinion, there is a notable advantage to studying behavior because the data will allow me to further my studies and to implement positive changes that are long term and have actual positive implications. 

 
My School Cafeteria Water Station and the Cups Used.

Within this blog post, I want to share my project and all in the information that I have on my research board! It's a lot of information :)

Research Board Information 


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