Wednesday was a picture-perfect day for promoting sustainability on the Medford campus! President Monaco hosted another picnic on the Medford campus. Faculty, staff, students and new graduates gathered to eat a delicious lunch provided by Tufts catering and enjoyed the beautiful day outside.
To make the picnic a zero-waste event, staff from the Office of Sustainability helped attendees sort recyclable and compostable items at the numerous zero-waste stations located throughout the venue.
Catering also helped with sustainability efforts by providing condiments and drinks in bulk, as opposed to the smaller, individual packages that are commonly seen at such events. This helps reduce packaging waste produced by the event.
In addition to the standard recycling collected at all zero-waste events, plastic film and bags were collected separately to be recycled at Whole Foods!
In order to take our sustainability efforts a step further, we promoted the event as BYOP – Bring Your Own Place-Setting. While using compostable and recyclable items are a great first step to reducing waste, bringing your own place setting from home or work helps reduce waste even more efficiently.
The first 90 attendees who visited the Office of Sustainability’s table had the opportunity to show the plates, knives, forks, and cups they had brought with them to claim a free, reusable sandwich bag as well as an “I saved a Tree” sticker. To our delight and surprise, we ran out of the sandwich bags after just twenty minutes!
Everyone who had a complete place setting was also invited to participate in our raffle to win an insulated, multi-compartmental, bento-style lunchbox. Over 140 people entered our raffle!
We loved seeing the diversity of the place settings people brought with them, and couldn’t be happier with the number of people who enthusiastically stopped by our table.
Head to our Facebook page to see all the photos of everyone who stopped by our table on Wednesday with their place settings.
If you are a faculty, student, or staff at the Boston or Grafton campuses, be sure to bring your own plates, cups, knives, and forks to the President’s lunches next month for a chance to get a reusable sandwich bag and to enter our raffle for the grand prize lunch box! For everyone at Medford, thanks for helping make the event a sustainable one, and we hope to see you next year.
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