Mr. Max Brown

HINESBURG ― CVU’s Environmental Action Club introduced metal silverware into the cafeteria on January 20th, a substitute for the old plastic silverware, aiming to reduce plastic waste.

The initiative began by replacing every plastic utensil with a silverware one instead. With the goal of reducing the amount of waste produced by CVU students, the switch cuts thousands of wasted utensils each week.

“We went through about 2,000 pieces of plastic silverware a week,” says EnAct’s Senior member Rachel Slimovitch. “Which is a lot considering they were all going in the trash.”

Some students expressed worry about the cleanliness of the silverware. EnAct responded with meetings for each class describing how the silverware is cleaned- very thoroughly.

The rollout of new silverware is one of many programs initiated by the CVU Environmental Action Club. Past milestones have included reducing CVU’s electrical energy usage by 10.8%, saving over $17,000.