Greening RSM Sustainability Challenge:
Alternative beverage systems on campus
The challenge
Develop a (technically, economically, and legally) feasible business plan that makes disposable
plastic bottles on campus obsolete.
Make sure to duly consider the interests of all stakeholders.
Your submission can and should consider and include relevant material from external sources,
such as scientific, economic, and business studies, statistics, legal regulations, industry reports and
norms, best-practice examples from other organizations inside and outside the Netherlands,
photos, hyperlinks, videos or other illustrative material.
Ensure to include references wherever external sources are used.
Your solution should not exceed 15 pages, excluding reference list and appendices.
Submit your concept electronically (MS Office document or PDF) to greeningrsm@rsm.nl by August
31st, 2011
Submissions include:
o Solution to the challenge
o Your contact details (Name, class, e-mail and telephone number)
o CV
Top 3 entries will be selected and will be asked to pitch their solution to a jury on September 5th,
2011. The jury will select one winner.
The winner will be rewarded with an internship opportunity with Enviu.
Should you have any questions, please contact Gabi Helfert (ghelfert@rsm.nl).
Background Information
The current situation
On Erasmus University (EUR)’s Woudestein Campus, approximately 16,000 students and 1,200
employees buy around 340,000 plastic bottles of water or soft drinks every year from the campus
restaurants and vending machines. Campus restaurants also sell 540,000 plastic cups of milk,
buttermilk, chocolate milk, yogurt, salad, fruit salad and juice. The oil consumed for the production and
shipping of all of this plastic packaging is around 100,000 litres per year. That is enough oil to heat
142 average family homes for a whole year. The water used in the production of this plastic is nearly
1,000,000 litres. This amounts to the drinking water consumption of 1,400 people during a whole year.
A recycling system for plastic packaging was introduced on campus in April 2011. Recycling plastic is
certainly more sustainable than dropping plastic refuse in a landfill site or, as in the Netherlands,
burning it in an incinerator. However, plastic bottles cannot be recycled into new bottles or food
containers, which means they must be ‘downcycled’. Recycled plastics can be made into motor oil
bottles, detergent bottles, garment, grocery and garbage bags, lids and squeezable bottles, toys,
clothing, greenhouse panels, and plastic components and shells used in electronics.
What’s more, transporting waste to recycling centres (in Germany, because there are currently no
facilities in the Netherlands), sorting it and recycling it also consumes energy, albeit much less than
the production of new plastics.
Current alternatives
Tap water in the Netherlands is of excellent quality. Employees on campus have access to tap water
in the tea kitchens on each floor of most buildings, which are equipped with tableware and glassware.
Many tea kitchens have water coolers that use tap water, but not every employee makes use of these
options.
Many employees choose instead to use plastic bottles from the campus restaurants and vending
machines, or the disposable plastic cups from the tea kitchens. Probably for reasons of convenience,
these are thrown away in office waste bins, which are emptied by cleaning staff twice per week. There
is a juice dispenser in the café in T4, but there are no glasses provided for the customers; instead,
they have to fill plastic cups. For carbonated soft drinks, there is no dispenser anywhere on campus,
nor is there anywhere to buy returnable or reusable bottles.
The situation looks even more dire for students. Bringing a reusable plastic or aluminium bottle from
home is possible, but the refilling process on campus is tedious. There is no freely accessible water
tap on campus. The wash basins in the bathrooms have very low taps, which do not allow a reusable
bottle to be fitted below them, and many people would prefer not to use a bathroom to obtain water for
drinking.
Stakeholders and their interests
Consumers: our students and employees want access to cheap and convenient water and soft
drinks that they can take away. It’s also important to consider that a large amount of consumers
(e.g., for the RSM, 40% of students and 30% of employees) on campus are non-Dutch, and have
very diverse experiences with and attitudes to environmental sustainability. Many students are
more interested in their careers and in extracurricular fun activities than in environmental
sustainability.
EUR Facility Management: facing budget restrictions, the provider of facilities needs to offer
solutions that are budget-neutral. Furthermore, it must observe legal and security regulations and
acknowledge the department’s responsibility towards hygiene, health and safety on campus.
The catering company: seeking to sell soft drinks, which are a major source of turnover and profit,
the caterer is eager to continue using disposable plastic bottles, which have the additional
advantage of not requiring any input from the workforce for collection or return. They are picked up
with the regular refuse or by the recycling company.
The recycling company: since plastic waste needs to be separated from food remains, paper,
metal, and other contaminators, the recycler wants to be sure to achieve a reasonable recycling
rate. If the collected plastic is contaminated by ca. 30% refuse or more, the whole bag is discarded
and conventionally disposed of.
Governmental bodies: Rotterdam is one of the few communities in the Netherlands which has not
implemented a recycling system for plastics. Other than in countries like, e.g., Germany, there is no
deposit on disposable plastic bottles, so that people don't bother to bring them back to a collection
point in order to get their deposit returned.
The beverage industry in the Netherlands: unlike other beverages such as most beers, which are
sold in returnable and refillable glass bottles, soft drinks in shops are only offered in plastic bottles,
with only large bottles being returnable. Breweries such as Heineken offer small 0.2 litre glass
bottles, which are also used by producers of bottled water and other soft drinks, but glass bottles
with a crown cap are not really convenient for people who move around on campus all day, since
they are not resealable. There is more information on packaging in the Dutch beverage industry in
Dutch here, or translated by Google.
We look forward to receive your submissions!
RSM Net Impact and GreeningRSM Team