Break Free From Plastic Campus Pledge

I was born and raised in Southwestern Pennsylvania, which has been ravaged by the fossil fuel extraction industry. Just north of my home, one of the biggest “Cracker Plants” in the world (plastic production facility) has been under construction for more than a year. This plant will destroy the already bad air quality in Pittsburgh, and will continue the proliferation of single-use disposable plastics. I started my organizing work as a student in the fossil fuel divestment movement, and now have shifted towards eliminating single use plastic because of the construction of this cracker plant. I’ve learned unique skills from interning with The Center for Coalfield Justice, being a student organizer, and living in a community whose culture is rooted in the extraction industry. Now, I work for the Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) as the Campaign Director for the Plastic Free Campus movement.

Disposable plastic and the pollution it causes is a prolific global problem, and plastic production facilities are increasing production exponentially. We are committed to establishing models of communities that have systematically eliminated single-use disposable plastics, starting with college campuses as the first case studies. Systematic elimination at a community level has never been achieved because of the myriad complications that arise with bureaucratic decision making, food vendors controlled by different departments, a lack of system-wide purchasing policies and a lack of infrastructure to support system-wide reusable to-go programs and compost collection. Our Campus Pledge to “Break Free From Plastic” (BFFP), developed in coalition with the global BFFP movement, provides the tools and resources necessary to overcome common institutional barriers by facilitating campus stakeholders through the process of developing a collaborative system-wide solution that supersedes departmental silos, and calls on the President of the college commit to supporting the project’s implementation.

If your bathtub was overflowing, you wouldn’t start by removing water from the tub one cup at a time, you would start by turning off the tap. We are solving the global plastic pollution crisis with the same methodology, by stopping consumption at the source. According to a report by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, there is already over 165 million tons of plastic in the oceans, and by 2050 there will be more plastic (937 million tons) than fish. Besides the harm to fish and animals that mistake plastic for food, historically marginalized and frontline communities are also disproportionately harmed by the production and pollution of disposable plastics all over the world, an example of which can be found through the recent settlement against Formosa plastics in Texas, and evidence of carcinogenic air pollution. According to National Geographic, only 9% of plastic is recycled, and increasing recycling efforts will never solve the problem, we have to stem the tide of production and consumption of single-use disposable plastics. To do this, community-level solutions are necessary, but complicated due to bureaucracy and a lack of system-level infrastructure, policies and logistics. We provide the pathway for campuses to develop system-level solutions.

The BFFP Campus Pledge is to be signed by the College President to commit the institution to a process of both eliminating single-use disposable plastics and also establishing the necessary infrastructure, policies and logistics to replace disposables with sustainable alternatives. To sign the pledge, campuses have to follow 4 steps:

1. Establish a task force that includes necessary stakeholders from over a dozen campus departments

2. Identify disposable items that can be replaced with sustainable alternatives immediately

3. Identify long-term system-wide solutions for harder to replace items - for example: establishing campus-wide compost collection, establishing campus-wide reusable to-go ware programs, installing industrial dishwashers to handle increased reusables volume, establishing policies for large events and athletics facilities, etc.

4. Receiving the president's signature and a commitment to a timeline for implementation. 

The Campus Pledge also comes with a series of toolkits and resources, from case studies and examples of solutions, to tools and resources for students to learn leadership and organizing skills. We support students who are organizing efforts to meet with administrators and encourage them to set up the task force, and we support stakeholders and administrators as they work through the process of the pledge to ultimately receive signatures from the president.

Our direct community is students and staff at colleges and universities, but our indirect impact is the historically marginalized communities that are harmed by plastic pollution through both its creation and its disposal. Over the last 7 years, PLAN has cultivated a network of over 500 campuses. We hold annual conferences and summits where students and staff often take the lead in presenting on their experiences, and we have traveled around the US numerous times - touring facilities, learning from students and staff, and documenting best practices on over 200 campuses. We use the lessons and case studies we have developed from these experiences to build new tools and resources, to train and empower students to organize their peers and push for change at their university level, and to advise, facilitate, and consult with campus stakeholders through the process of navigating complex bureaucratic systems to establish community-level solutions. We provide the solutions to common problems because we have seen them so many times. In the process of creating materials for this campaign, we incorporate student and staff feedback at all steps, and often work directly with them to collaborate on the development of future resources.

The BFFP Campus Pledge elevates the global issue of disposable plastics, and the negative harms they cause historically marginalized communities and the environment  both where plastics are produced and where they are disposed of. We have built the tools and resources necessary to train and inspire students to take action on their campus, and our model has a proven track record of achieving results. We also work with campus stakeholders to develop long-term solutions that systematically eliminates disposable plastics and creates a model for other institutions to follow. 

Our work on the BFFP Campus Pledge began in the Summer of 2018, when we saw a number of colleges announce what they referred to as “plastic free” initiatives that, in actuality, only included eliminating a fraction of disposable plastic products - namely straws and bags. The PLAN Staff have a combined 60+ years of experience in higher education sustainability efforts, and we know how complicated “plastic free” initiatives truly are. This wave of efforts concerned us for two reasons - the first being that campus “plastic free” efforts didn’t include take out containers, coffee cups, utensils, condiment packets, and so many more disposable items, and the second being that the move to call them “plastic free” would remove the value of the phrase and gloss over the need to take further action. Over the next year we worked with students and staff on multiple campuses to draft, test, and ultimately release the BFFP Campus Pledge, with the goal of both setting a clear and definable standard as well as a process for implementation and achievement.

I am the person to deliver this project because my future depends on it. The future of my home depends on the elimination of single use plastic from our lifestyles. The Ohio River Valley is under threat from companies such as Shell and Exxon. They are hoping to turn this region into a petrochemical corridor because of its proximity to Marcellus Shale and Natural Gas. These producers are notorious for finding the most vulnerable communities to bulldoze over in their efforts for profit. The executives of these organizations have even admitted to this. In rural Pennsylvania there are lots of low income farmers and coal miners that have lost income and their homes because of these companies.The chemicals in these operations cause cancer, and lung disease, but the hospitals are under-resourced because the corporation doesn’t pay taxes. These corporations mirror the linear consumption economy: they enter these communities with promises of prosperity, but once the limited resource (whether coal, gas, or oil) is gone, they leave. They leave them with no care for the destruction they have caused. The companies use the people like a single-use item, and then throw them away. 

I already know how they have taken advantage of this region in the past: through my internship with the Center for Coalfield justice we met with local residents to discuss what they want for the region. I was trained to lead a tour that shows people not from the region what fracking looks like in the coalfields of Southwestern Pennsylvania. In college, I turned this tour virtual to increase the accessibility of seeing these injustices firsthand. In addition, I have been organizing in higher education for the last five years, and have come to know the ins and outs of creating change that can be replicated at higher levels. I was both on the student group to demand divestment and on the university committee to report on sustainable investment policies. I was able to nurture a transformation relationship between front-line community organizations and my school through alternative breaks, and other support.  In my capacity as a student worker, I was able to start a composting system on our campus, run a reusable menstrual product drive,and pass a resolution for free open source textbooks. I worked with our dining to run resume mug campaigns, and hosted countless zero waste events. I know how to work in and out of the system to get what we need done.

Our campaign focuses almost exclusively on switching to reusable systems. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit we reached out to our campuses to identify their immediate needs, and many relayed their concerns about whether their campuses could continue the use of reusable dishware. We used our network to interview epidemiologists and food safety experts, and researched food safety resources. In mid-May we released the Campus Reuse and Sanitation Toolkit, a step-by-step guide to help campuses work through logistics and infrastructure questions around the safe re-opening of dining facilities. Since it’s release, we have presented workshops around the use of the toolkit to over 300 campus staff, many of which have told us that our resources are referenced in their reopening plans. Additionally, while students were no longer physically on campus we began building new resources, including an effort to focus directly on the campuses in the immediate area around the petrochemical expansions happening in the Ohio River Valley and the Gulf Coast. We started by hosting a student intern to remotely research currently active campaigns and document schools in those regions. In Fall 2020 we will be launching BFFP Campus Pledge campaigns on a number of campuses in those areas.

I think my leadership ability is best showcased in my ability to mentor other people as leaders. I learned this skill from someone who did this for me, and it has always been a natural fit for me to step into that role to do the same.

As a mentor, the relationships I built focused on more than just the skills I was training, but also on the person. I built many friendships as a result that I continue to have. For example, my friend Anfernee started as a volunteer for our move in program collecting boxes. I remember putting his name in the schedule for my job. We were short staffed that year and Anfernee took on extra shifts. I sat with him for his extra sessions to support him and that grew our bond further. I learned that Anfernee was in a tough financial situation, but he was also the most consistent volunteer we had that year, and he kept coming back because of the friendships and community he was a part of. I was able to advocate for Anfernee to receive a paid position, and now he tells me about the students that he is mentoring. 

No complicated institution has achieved the systematic elimination of disposable plastic or a zero waste system. While a handful of individual facilities have (like a single coffee shop for example), this project focuses on the bureaucratic snares that occur when an institution has more than one (often multiple) decision makers. On a college campus for example (or a K-12 school, festival, hospital, etc) there are dining facilities, cafes and coffee shops, facilities/events managers as well as caterers, independent contractors of all varieties, and much more. System-wide solutions have never been delivered because they require the establishment of umbrella-level logistics and infrastructure that serve each of the facilities within the institution. None of the stakeholders that hold decision making authority for these individual facilities have the system-wide authority or financial resources to implement solutions at a system level. This problem requires a systems-thinking approach, and an outside facilitator is needed to guide stakeholders through the process of working together to envision a shared solution that works for all facilities, and then engage administrators through the process of agreeing to implement and fund those solutions. We have already seen six college presidents successfully sign the pledge, and our systemic solution will result in the first truly plastic free institutions in the world. We will continue to document their progress every step of the way, and will release a series of case studies showcasing that it is possible, and how to accomplish it.

The issue of waste is a by-product (a negative externality) of a much larger system, one we call the Linear Consumption Economy (LCE). The LCE produces an ever-growing stream of consumable products, an increasing number of which are disposable or are designed through planned obsolescence to be functionally or stylistically obsolete in a short period of time. Those Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG’s) start their journey on the LCE at the Point of Extraction, and move onto Production, then Distribution, then Consumption, and finally Disposal. PLAN’s theory of change is called The Points of Intervention (POI) Theory (a tool we learned through A Beautiful Trouble) and can be further explored in more detail in this 2 minute video we produced for a campus tour we hosted. POI are specific places in a system where a targeted action can effectively interrupt the functioning of a system and open the way to change. No one can do everything to turn the LCE into a more sustainable, circular economy, but everyone can do something. Our approach to this work is to provide the on-ramp for students and staff to identify their POI - the project or issue they are most passionate about, and provide as many tools and resources as possible to lead to successful outcomes. As an organization we regularly advise campuses on the developments of interventions like: purchasing policies that restrict certain items, thrift stores, repair shops and tools libraries, implementation of reusables or compostables, compost collection systems, and much more. 

With the BFFP Campus Pledge, we are both decreasing Extraction, Production and Consumption by intervening at the Point of Consumption, as well as intervening before Disposal to re-direct resources towards compost facilities and industrial dishwashers.

PLAN currently works with 50 campuses who have active student-led campaigns to get stakeholder task forces in place as part of Step 1 of the Campus Pledge to BFFP. Of those campaigns, 20 have established task forces that are working through the steps of the pledge to achieve the signature from the president. And finally, 6 of our campuses have received signatures from their president, and we are now working with both their student leaders and their stakeholder task force to benchmark and track progress towards system-level solutions. Altogether, we have about 150 students and 100 stakeholders that we are currently working with. 

In one year, by the beginning of the 2021 - 2022 school year, we expect to double the number of campuses, students and staff that we are working with, and our goal is to see 20 campuses sign the pledge. Within 5 years we expect that the momentum of our campaign will have taken on a snow-ball effect, and we will be working with at least 300 schools, serving roughly 900 students and 600 staff.

Three of PLAN’s staff members work on another project called the Zero Waste Atlas, a tool that helps campuses benchmark and track system-level solutions to Zero Waste, as well as identify gaps. Over the next five years we will use this tool to help our BFFP Pledge campuses gather consistent data and report on system-level impacts.

As stated above, in the next few years we plan to produce a series of case studies that document insitutitions through their journeys to systematically eliminate disposable plastics, and then use those case studies to inspire others to action. Many other institutions are similar to colleges because of their bureaucratic decision making systems, and these case studies will be extremely useful for them. PLAN staff serve in a number of organizational and leadership roles within the Global BFFP Movement. We have staff that serve on the Corporate Working Group, the Reuse Network, the youth working groups  and the Zero Waste Communities Working Group. We also represent youth on the Member Support Team. Our involvement in these initiatives allows us to be tied into a global community that can both distribute our resources all around the world, but also inspire them, their organizations, and their volunteers to replicate similar models in communities and institutions beyond college campuses. We will have finally shown the world that plastic free institutions are possible!

Our goal is to be working with at least 300 schools, serving roughly 900 students and 600 staff in the next 5 years, and also to inspire the global movement to develop tools and resources to hold their own institutions to the same standards.

There are some market barriers to this project, namely that while some initiatives to eliminate disposable plastics will save money, others can be more complicated. For example, single-use compostable products are often more expensive than disposable plastics. Also investing in establishing reuse systems has a high up-front cost due to the cost of the dishware as well as the infrastructure like dishwashers and collection systems. ROI’s can be calculated, but also have to factor in the likelihood of re-supply purchases for lost, stolen or damaged dishes. ROI model outcomes will depend on the scale of the operation. 

The other challenge is cultural. We have become accustomed to living disposable lifestyles mixed with moments of sustainable and reusable experiences. For example, we don’t think twice about eating off of reusable dishes in restaurants that thousands before us have eaten from, but we haven’t yet to become accustomed to sharing reusable to-go coffee mugs or containers in the same way.

With compostable products being more expensive, they will become cheaper and more readily available as increased demand will allow for the scaling of production. With regard to ROI calculations, we are encouraging campuses to quantify the student recruitment and retention benefits of establishing plastic free initiatives. According to a 2019 Princeton Review survey of nearly 12,000 college applicants, approximately 64 percent consider a school’s environmental commitment when deciding where to attend. With waste being a very visible part of a school’s environmental commitment, these system solutions could prove to have significant ROI value during a prospective student's first tour of campus. We are working with advisors to better isolate and quantify this measurable impact. 

With regard to culture shift, we know that the solution is to implement systemic changes that make it as easy as possible to use reusable dishware wherever you go at your institution. You should be able to pick up a reusable coffee mug at the coffee shop on your way to class, and drop it off at a collection bin outside the library on your way to study. Later, you should be able to take dinner leftovers in your reusable to-go container, and drop your empty container in the collection bin in your dorm later. We have to help our campuses implement solutions in their communities in a way that they become part of the new everyday culture.

Our main partner on this project is the global BFFP movement. In a previous answer we outlined that PLAN Staff serve on a variety of committees, and we work together to both set the direction of the Global BFFP Strategy, and also identify the role that PLAN’s work will play in that overall effort. 

We also work with StudentPIRG, an organization that specializes in galvanizing large numbers of students for specific actions. For example, if students within our campus campaign are being told by stakeholders at dining that they would be open to exploring efforts to be more sustainable, but right now they don’t know for sure that the students even want that, we can work with StudentPIRG to gather thousands of student petition signatures that request the campus set up the Zero Waste Task Force as step 1 of the Pledge, and that the president of the college sign the pledge when it’s ready. 

We have growing relationships with Algalita and Divest Ed to combine our efforts in supporting students throughout their educational career.

PLAN has an overall business model to support college campuses that are working towards zero waste, and part of that strategy includes that some of our products and services are free and open for any student or staff member to access. The BFFP Campus Pledge is a free resource, readily available on our website. This allows us to strategically engage with passionate student leaders who are excited to bring about changes on their campus, and work towards building long term relationships with the campus to support them through various paid services we offer in the future. 

PLAN brings in revenue in a variety of ways, from charging registration fees for our conferences and summits, to charging annual campus membership fees for all students and staff on campus to access digital Member Hub - a portal that provides discounts with partner companies, access to leadership trainings and program development workshops, a program case library, and over 600 pages of resources, manuals, toolkits, and best practices guides that we researched and wrote ourselves. 

Finally, PLAN charges a fee to perform a Zero Waste Atlas Assessment, and many campuses hire us as consultants to help facilitate their campus stakeholders through envisioning system-level solutions and implementing next steps. 

PLAN is a non-profit organization and a majority of our budget is still funded through grants and philanthropy, however we have a long-term business plan that includes having a diversified funding stream and stable annual revenues to keep the organization in good financial standing.

PLAN is entering its eighth year of operations this Fall, and we have grown steadily, starting with two full-time staff and now we have 11 who receive full-time salaries and benefits and an annual budget that is around $800,000/year. We are just wrapping up our first 5-year strategic plan at the end of 2020, having met all the goals we set out to achieve, and we are in the process of working with our Board and our Staff through developing our next 5-year strategic plan. Overall we are in a very steady place financially. We have built significant savings, and we have philanthropic supporters who have collectively committed to fund more than half of our operations each year for the next 3-6 years. We are building exciting new relationships with other funders, and we are planning to grow in line with the needs and demands of the movement. We have a strong track record of steady revenue growth. As we launch new initiatives that are showing promising potential for scale - like our Zero Waste Atlas Assessments, and new efforts as consultants that are allowing us to charge significant fees, we are excited to be continuing to build our organization in a fiscally responsible manner.

Grants and Philanthropic Support:

- $350,000 annual commitment from the Tres Conejos de Marzo Fund

- $240,000 grant (split into three years) from the Clif Bar Family Foundation

- $25,000 Heartwired to the Ocean grant for BFFP Campus Pledge campaign

- $35,000 Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance grant for BFFP Campus Pledge campaign

- $50,000 Plastic Solutions Fund grant for campus Zero Waste Atlas Assessments

- $30,000 Funders Collaborative on Oil and Gas for BFFP Campus Pledge campaign on campuses in the Ohio River Valley petrochemical buildout

- Over $100,000 in contributions from individual donors

Revenue from Service Fees:

- $42,000 in campus consulting fees

- $30,000 in campus registration fees to conferences and summits

- $20,000 in campus membership fees

- $5,775 in honorariums for speaking events and trainings (lower than normal due to COVID-19 campus closures)

The BFFP Campus Pledge campaign has a goal of raising $150,000 in 2021 to support the costs of this campaign. As we grow this project, we hope to add additional staff to support the volume of students and staff we will be advising. There are other costs related to this project associated with travel, hosting summits to bring people together, etc that are dependent on the future of COVID-19 and how possible it will be to organize together in person. 

The 2020 budget for this project is $65,000. This includes staff salary, overhead and benefits expenses to support my position, as well as costs associated with traveling to visit campuses (before the pandemic hit), attending and presenting at conferences, video recording equipment, and hosting a paid student intern. 

The Elevate Prize can help us overcome barriers in a number of ways. The funding from this prize will allow us to reach out financial goals for the next two years, allowing us to both increase our staff support for this project to meet growing demand, while also allowing us to dedicate 100% of our time towards the work, and less time fundraising for and writing grants for the work. 

The reputation and honor that will come with this prize will allow us to more easily inspire other campuses to get involved, further contributing to that snowball effect as more campuses get involved and allowing us to move closer towards the culture shift we are seeking. 

Finally, we would like to ask for support from those in The Elevate Prize network on how to isolate and quantify the quantitative and qualitative impacts of increasing recruitment and retention rates as a result of implementing system-level waste solutions on college campuses. The more we can make that ROI argument clear, the easier it will be to convince administrators to get on board. 

We are always looking for new coaches, advisors and board members, that work is never finished and we are always open to new ideas, suggestions, and expertise. As we continue our work with the Zero Waste Atlas Project - which focuses on building a tool to monitor and evaluate the progress of campuses eliminating disposable plastics and achieving zero waste - we are also looking for advisors who have experience with that. And finally, it is always a good idea to seek out media and exposure, and as our BFFP Campus Pledge grows in popularity, we will be seeking support with marketing.