WWU offers greener way to take out food
By Terry Murry on Monday, November 29th, 2021 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
COLLEGE PLACE – Students at Walla Walla University now have an eco-friendly option to take food from the campus cafeteria back to their dorm rooms. Sodexo, WWU’s food services provider, is offering students the opportunity to purchase a reusable take-out box instead of the single-use, disposable boxes.
Students purchase durable green boxes to take the food back to take with them, then they can bring the containers back and exchange them for clean ones or get Sodexo carabiners to exchange for boxes later. Sodexo employees wash the containers for future use.
Buying the disposable containers cost Sodexo $30,000 to $40,000 a year and the bulky containers quickly filled dumpsters. To remedy those problems, Sodexo invested approximately $5,000 in the reusable containers.
Although Sodexo employees must now spend extra time washing the containers, Sodexo general manager Michael Benca said that his “team has invested gleefully, gladly, into the program because of the benefit it is to being a green initiative.”
