As the night is over, Sodexo staff members get rid of disposable plates and cutlery. Photo: Natalia Roque-Cuadra

Dal group wants alternatives to disposable plates and cutlery

Catering company gives them few options, they say

Dalhousie University recently approved Environmental Sustainability as a new academic program. However, some groups on campus say the university's food service provider is effectively forcing them to use disposable items for their catered events.

On Jan. 31, the Dalhousie Spanish Society held La Velada, its annual Spanish fiesta. However, it struggled without much luck to use regular plates and cutlery for its paella and the locally famous chimichurri.

"Why insist on regular plates as opposed to disposable ones?" asked one of the event's co-ordinators, Johanna Fell. "Isn't Dal about sustainability? And who wants to use plastic plates at their biggest event of the year?"

Fell, like Spanish society president Selina Peilerin, say a price quoted by on-campus catering provider Sodexo Canada Ltd. for use of regular plates was simply too expensive. Instead, they used paper plates and plastic cutlery for the event.

Peilerin says the society had little choice because Sodexo was asking them to pay $3.20 more per plate if they wanted regular tableware because they needed to pay to wash the dishes.

According to the quote, serving the meal on regular plates would have cost the society $15.75 per plate and on plastic $12.55, Peilerin says.

The society sold all its 400 tickets to the show.

"I mean that's $1,200, and just to wash dishes? It seemed unreadable to me and I e-mailed Cindy about it, I was pretty upset, so Johanna asked me not to go to her office." But nothing ever came out of it.

Sodexo manager Cindy Macdonald said in a phone conversation she didn't have time to talk about the subject.

"The person you need to speak to is the one that arranged [the catering service], because they were the ones that accepted the deal," she said in a phone conversation.

The deal Macdonald is referring to is the catering offer the Spanish society co-ordinators accepted for the fiesta.

Fell says she didn't like the fact that Sodexo's manager never mentioned plastic plates when the society first approached the food provider to get a price quote. "We assumed everything was going to be regular plates," she said.

Similar case last year

This isn't the first time a group on campus has been upset by Sodexo's use of disposable items.

Last year, Dalhousie's International Students Association held its biggest annual event. President Gilberto De Melo says the night of the event he was disappointed when he saw Sodexo staff were putting plastic paper cups on the tables. He says they had never discussed disposable plates when they closed the deal because in previous years Sodexo hadn't used them.

"I went to talk to Cindy," he said, "but she told me that that's how things were."

"I mean, I don't want to lash out at Sodexo -- they did a good job providing their services, and they always helped with whatever we needed," he says. De Melo says the plastic cups were the only issue they had with the catering company.

The vice-president of the Dalhousie Student Union, David Boyle, says the union works closely with Sodexo -- and they have to. People don't have other options because the university has an agreement with Sodexo, giving them the sole rights to catering for any event that takes place at the Student Union Building which accommodates the biggest events.

"We make a lot of efforts," Boyle says, referring to sustainability initiatives the union tries to enact on campus.

Dalhousie University has its own sustainability department where it has many sustainability programs such as the electronics recycling program which started in the fall of 2008. No one from their office could be reached for comments on this particular issue.

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