Here is a very rough estimation: on a given night, each game of Beirut around campus uses at least 22 Solo cups. Let’s say there are roughly 50 games played on a given weekend night during pre-parties, houses parties, frats and team drink-ups. This seems like a pretty low figure on a campus of 2,700 students. Assuming that each old cup isn’t replaced with a new one at the end of each game, we’re talking about 1,100 cups each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, just from playing Beirut.
Now let’s consider the cups used at parties. A small party is likely to have beer cans, but anything with a keg or hard liquor requires a supply of Solos. We’ll assume that at least 30% of the student population drinks from a Solo cup any given weekend night, giving 810 cups. Add that to the number from Beirut, and multiply that number by three for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, you’ll find that there are 5,730 Solos cups used and disposed of every weekend at Wesleyan.
These statistics are completely speculative, but they’re worth considering and adding up. I’d be willing to bet that if there were a formal poll, we’d find 5,730 to be a vast underestimation. In a brilliant marketing strategy by The Solo Cup Company, red Solos have become the icon of college parties in movies, TV show, and real life. You can’t go to a party, particularly one at a Frat house, without seeing the—nd you’ll probably end up with one in your hand.
Solos are number 5 plastic, which means they cannot be recycled in most states, including Connecticut. They are manufactured from non-recycled materials at a plant in Illinois, so their production and transportation requires a huge amount of fossil fuel energy. In short, Solo cups are an environmental debacle, to say the least. They demonstrate the American mentality of convenience, abundance and disposability that stands of a serious fight against climate change. And they are all over Wesleyan’s campus.
So why haven’t college environmental groups taken this issue on? In my time as an EON member, we never considered it one of our goals, despite our big push for the administration to completely revamp the recycling system to ensure the recycling of beer cans. Maybe it’s because Solo cups are such a fixture of college parties that we hate to even breach the topic. We already annoy our friends and hall-mates by nagging them to turn off their lights and unplug their phone chargers, so we’d be really out of the mainstream if we started questioning the favorite drinking game on campus.
It may also be because we don’t have a lot of easy alternatives to Solo cups. Recycled and/or recyclable plastic products are not nearly as cheap or readily available, and compostable cups are even further out of reach. And when other brands of disposables are used as substitutes, Beirut fanatics usually don’t stick around the party for long.
EON members are complicit in this problem too, because we have sick parties. At our first one of the year, we asked everyone to bring a glass from home so that our host wouldn’t have to buy Solos. This is a workable strategy, and I give a nod to people who go from party to party with a Nalgene bottle, filling it up at each stop. Using your own glass or bottle also removes the “which cup is mine?” dilemma that can lead to awkwardness—or mono.
When my house had a party, my roommates and I were lucky to have an obscene supply of glasses, mugs and old tomato sauce jars, so no need for plastics. This worked great, and I gloated about it for days. I’m still gloating about it right now in this column. One EON member, who lives in Fauver Apartments, bought a bunch of Solos at the beginning of the year and has been washing them each time he and his roommates have a party. This allows him some respectably eco-friendly Beirut, although the strategy works best with a kitchen sink and patient, eco-minded roommates.
So where does this leave EON in the fight against Solo cups? We definitely encourage everyone to bring their own refillable bottle to a party, and wash it when they get home. We recommend to Weshop that they stop carrying Solo cups and provide a more eco-friendly replacement that would satisfy EON ranks and Beirut players alike. But mostly, we ask people to find a creative alternative that works for them.
This is an important point, because reducing the use of Solo cups on campus isn’t really about reducing waste. It’s about challenging the mentality of expedience and consumption. It’s about putting our money where our socially responsible mouths are and making some inconvenient but worthwhile changes. In the end, it’s about pushing over-consumption and wastefulness out of the mainstream, and making sustainable practices the new norm. Have a sweet party without buying new Solo cups, any way you want.
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