Food for Thought
These helpful non-edible items can be found at every campus dining hall and composted alongside all of your food scraps.
What are napkins?
A staple of any college closet, this versatile item is a water hog, requiring just under 1,000 gallons of water to produce.
What are jeans?
This action should be taken if you are unsure of whether or not an item is recyclable.
What is throw it out?
The Environmental Protection Agency defines this term as “The fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, incomes, and educational levels with respect to the development and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
What is environmental justice?
This specific action allows you to get a 15% discount on your Coffee Club order.
What is getting a drink in a reusable cup/mug/tumbler?
This greenhouse gas, more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide, is produced when organic waste (like uneaten food) enters landfills and decays.
What is methane?
The National Park Service offers guidelines to reduce the release of these insoluble particles into washer wastewater.
What are microplastics?
This step must be taken before you recycle the glass Tico’s juice & smoothie bottles from Late Meal.
What is washing out and drying them?
This term refers to the disproportionate victimization of communities of color by environmental hazards.
What is environmental racism?
Princeton's TigerTransit buses emit this much carbon dioxide on average each year.
What is none?
This campus biodigester helps facilitate compost research and processes about 15 percent of the food waste on campus, mostly from Coffee Club and Frist.
What is the S.C.R.A.P. Lab?
In 2022, this international organization announced regulations on fast fashion companies to take effect by 2030.
What is the European Union?
This is how you should dispose of a cardboard coffee cup.
What is throw it away?
This Sustainable Development Goal includes achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
What is zero hunger?
According to Princeton’s most recent sustainability action plan, the University is planning to attain net-zero carbon emissions by this year.
What is 2046?
This label on all of Princeton’s compostable items allows you to determine which to-go containers can and cannot be composted at the Frist Compost Station.
What is an EcoProducts label?
As of 2024, nylon and this material account for 69% of all materials used in clothing.
What is polyester?
This is the most profitable material to recycle.
What is scrap metal?
This scientist was the first to publish systematic research on the links between race and exposure to pollution in the 1970s.
Who is Robert D. Bullard?
There are approximately this many filtered water bottle-filling stations on campus.
What is 250?
These are 3 ways that YOU can reduce food-related waste at Princeton.
e.g. What are 1) only taking what you can eat 2) sorting trash from compost 3) explaining the compost system to your friends?
This type of store sells secondhand items on behalf of their original owners, who then receive a percentage of the selling price.
What is a consignment store?
Princeton Facilities employees are trained to throw out everything in a recycling bin if more than this percentage of its contents are contaminated or non-recyclable.
What is 10 percent?
This Princeton course focuses on wilderness-centered conservation, deep ecology, urban-centered environmentalism, Indigenous sovereignty, land return, and climate justice.
What is ENV 238: Environmental Movements: Conservation to Climate Justice?
Princeton uses this technology to reduce energy usage by recirculating water and transferring heat energy.
What is geoexchange?