Intro Edited
Waste of any kind is a common difficulty on a campus with over 40,000 students. However, at Penn State, we have opportunities to be more sustainable, whether it be Reuse containers at the dining halls or discounts at Starbucks for bringing in your own cup. Yet, we still have massive amounts of waste including food waste, containers, and cups. Though there are opportunities, there is a wonder if these are enough, and if the student body makes appropriate use of these opportunities. Areas like the Hub experience massive foot traffic of students and serve as a major source for food and beverage throughout the day. The use of plastic and paper cups at the Hub Starbucks and other fast food eateries contributes greatly to the food and beverage waste of the Hub, with trash cans occasionally overflowing. The library additionally has a lot of foot traffic that contributes to a lot of cup waste, with the highly popular library Starbucks. At an institution of 40,000 students, it can be difficult to truly alleviate the stress of waste, yet Penn State is constantly improving its sustainability measures. To further reduce the waste present across campus, Penn State should enact a new system for reusable and returnable cups across the Hub and the library to reduce beverage container waste.
Outline
- Intro
- Food and plastic waste on Penn State campus
- Authority- campus administration for dining halls, sustainability administration?
- Thesis- Penn State must implement a new system to prevent plastic waste from beverages on campus.
- Refillable system at the Hub, possible Meal Plan specifically for beverages to promote using own/reusable cups
- strategy- system change, inducement
- Evidence
- Statistics for food waste from dining hall if take in dining hall direction
- Statistics for waste at the Hub and library
- major spots with heavy student traffic
- common places for beverage purchase- the Starbucks on campus
- Mimic the reuse containers in dining hall, but for beverages around campus
- statistics for how efficiently these work to combat food waste
- How to implement
- Bring to dining administration at Penn State, possibly also sustainability administration
- Can be implemented using system changes
- Possible inducements for using own cup and promoting it a lot more to get students to know about it and follow through
- Feasibility
- Feasible to implement, due to evidence from dining halls
- Will students use?
- How to promote to student body? Returnable reusable beverage cups?
- Make discount known?
- Objections
- Students may find easier to simply throw away a cup
- If not knowledgable about, would not use a reusable system
1 Identify and discuss the organizational pattern (or the closest one to it) from the Arranging a Policy Speech Keyword. Is this a good structure for the topic and policy arguments? Make some comments or suggestions.
It seems like you are using that “problem/existing plan/counterplan” organization strategy. I believe that this will be good for your topic because it is evident that Penn State has tried to reduce waste, but it clearly hasn’t reached the whole campus as it needs to. I think it is a good idea to incorporate all the reusable options PSU has tried to promote for students to use, and then build your reusable options based off of those.
2. Do the topic sentences point back to the thesis and/or make the argumentative claim for the paragraph? Give one strong example or one example of a sentence that could be improved.
From the headings, it seems like all the topic sentences will point right back to the thesis. I definitely feel like it will be argumentative with the use of previous places where reusable options have been promoted.
3. How is the evidence working as of now? Do we need more research? Where in the paper would more evidence (and what kinds of evidence) be helpful?
I think that the evidence of what was listed so far will definitely work. All of the areas of statistics were spot on, and I would suggest using all of those. I don’t think there is any more evidence that needs to be reached. It is possible that you could maybe look at other universities that may have less food waste than PSU and show their reuse policies. However, that is not necessary to add.
4. How are the infographs working? If there are no infographs yet, please provide ideas for them.
I think the best infographs would be used to show all of the waste at different locations. Also, adding one where reusable containers are used and comparing the waste there would be very beneficial to see. Overall, I just think the stats of waste around campus is what I would highlight in infograpghs.