NEWS
Sustainable Westport Superstar: The Staples Cheer Team’s Pyramid Club
Sustainable Westport is thrilled to recognize the Staples Cheer Team’s Pyramid Club as this month’s Sustainable Superstar. Their initiative truly checks all the boxes: identifying an opportunity to reduce waste—especially single-use plastic—thinking creatively to solve a challenge, and following through with impressive results.
Read on to learn how the Pyramid Club took meaningful steps to UnPlastic their team dinners.
What did you do to UnPlastic the team dinners? What motivated you?
The Varsity Football and Cheer teams have a weekly pasta dinner together during the fall season. The Gridiron Club generously provides all the food and the Pyramid Club has been responsible for providing water and dessert. This fall, as we were planning our outreach to the cheer team to get volunteer donations of those items for each week, it occurred to us just how many single use plastic bottles would be required each week to keep the teams hydrated and it just felt truly overwhelming. We decided to approach it differently this year. We provided compostable paper cups for the athletes and coaches each week and served water in reusable pitchers.
What were some of the challenges you faced?
The first challenge was that we didn’t know if we could or how we would access the kitchen at Staples High School. The pasta dinners are held in the cafeteria but the kitchen is always gated closed. So week one we still brought bottled water to pour in the paper cups, but used the large 2.5 gallon containers, feeling that at least this was less plastic than 100+ bottles a week. But this was not ideal as it still required bottled water purchases and the filling and refilling of cups was cumbersome.
The next week, we were able to contact a custodian who opened the kitchen for us, giving us access not only to tap water but also to the school’s ice machine. We purchased 12 reusable restaurant-style pitchers and compostable paper cups and it was so much easier and more sustainable.
The second challenge was that the pitchers needed to be filled and the water set up before the dinner, creating one more task for an already busy time. This required more effort than simply dropping off cases of bottled water to be placed on the tables and we worried that the parent volunteers would grow weary of the extra effort this system required. But we quickly learned that it really didn’t take that much time and were so appreciative of the warm welcome we received from the Gridiron volunteers and their willingness to jump in and help with the water set up each week.
The final challenge is a continuing one – someone has to collect the pitchers at the end of each dinner and wash them for the following week. It is an extra step that the convenience of disposable water bottles doesn’t require, but it honestly is a very small time expenditure for a huge benefit to the environment. Anecdotally, we also think the athletes drank more water because it was cold and easily accessible on the tables to refill their cups.
Approximately how many single-use water bottles would you say were kept out of the waste stream?
I would say we kept approximately 1,000 water bottles out of the waste stream over the course of the season.
Thank you to the Pyramid Club for your leadership, creativity, and commitment to reducing plastic waste. Your efforts made a real impact and set a powerful example for our community.
Inspired by the Pyramid Club? Take a moment to look at your own daily routines, teams, and traditions—and consider where small changes could help UnPlastic your world.
