Student
Mini-interview

Two thousand plastic cups a day

Who? Blair van Pelt, first year MSc student of Organic AgricultureWhat? Member of Wageningen Environmental Platform (WEP)Why? WEP collected all the cups discarded in the Forum in one day and hung all 2000 of them up.

That must have been quite a task.

‘Yes, it took five people twelve hours to retrieve the cups and to sling them up.’

Is this the work of an unrealistic idealist?

‘Absolutely not. We want to make people aware of the problem: 2000 cups a day. There are plenty of intelligent and motivated people in this institution who value sustainability. We should be able to come up with a good solution together.’

Why is this so important to you?

‘Before coming here, I studied at Idaho. That’s not exactly a green university but there are no plastic cups on that campus. All first year students are given a water bottle and a reusable cup. I had expected that environmentally friendly Wageningen would do at least as well as that.’

Isn’t a normal cup more harmful for the environment?

‘I saw the plastic problem with my own eyes when I lived in Hawaii. There are a few beaches there where you can’t even see the sand. It just isn’t right for this university to contribute so much to a situation like that.’

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