Diversions Café is starting a new sustainability program called Grizz Groundz. The program will include packaging used coffee grounds and giving them back to the campus community; neighbors, students, faculty and staff will be free to take home the used grounds.
Community members can use these coffee grounds in their gardens, as coffee can be reused for many types of soil enhancement; this serves the dual purpose of reducing the campus’ carbon footprint as well. The community can pick up Grizz Grounds outside the Diversions Café/Wheelock Student Center entrance.
“Instead of just throwing away a ton of coffee beans, it’s taking what’s left and giving it to the community to actually use to help grow plants and to help the environment,” freshman Haneen Rasool said.
“I think that’s a great idea and a great use for that. I really like that they’re working with sustainability instead of just wasting a ton of products, they’re putting them to good use.”
“It’s good, it’s a nice step forward to actually help crops which reduces trash and land-fills,” sophomore Taylor Petersen said.
“They could make the cups recyclable, that would be nice, but that costs a lot of money to make recyclable cups. If both Diversions and Oppenheimer do it, that would be an even bigger step. Considering the mass consumption of coffee on campus, it’s actually a pretty good step towards sustainability.”
Diversions’ program Grizz Groundz is an important step toward improving sustainability on campus.
Diversions already has recycling programs in place, including giving back the coffee cup warmers to the café. Their new program can open up new ideas for more sustainability options on campus that benefit the community and the environment.
“I think within students there’s surprisingly not as much push for sustainability,” sophomore Lilly Oh said. “People are like, oh yeah, it’s great, but a lot of people don’t know how to recycle properly, or like energy consumption they don’t care as much.
I think if they made sustainability more like a campus thing, or like the staff and the administration are involved instead of asking students to care then I think it’s a better move. I think if the school provided ways then it would just be easier initiating something.”
Other possible solutions could include improving the use of recycling bins in the Student Center and using compost more frequently in the S.U.B.
“We could maybe start doing things more for vegetables,” Petersen said. “A big move that they should do, it bugs me that they don’t: there are no recycling bins in the S.U.B. at all. A lot of people just throw away things that could be recycled. There’s none in the Student Center at all.”
“I think the campus is on the right track and the more it goes this way we’re going to be a green campus, which is nice,” Rasool said. “I think that going in that direction is definitely the right way right now and I hope they stay on that path because right now they’ve done a really great job taking care of the campus and making it really green. They really support taking care of the environment, protecting the planet. When you think about for instance, when so many species are becoming endangered just because of our impact on the environment, I think trying to give back, to renew the environment in a way, bring it back to life…, it’s a part of who we are, it’s a part of everything basically, the way the world works. And without it, it’s kind of lost, so I think really trying to emphasize that is great and Grizz Groundz is really doing that.”
