UH Dining reintroduces reusable to-go containers
 
After ordering additional reusable to-go containers to fulfill student, faculty and staff demands, the University of Houston Dining Services is delighted to reintroduce the reusable to-go container program.

The to-go program allows students, faculty and staff to check out one of the 1,200 available containers for free with their valid Cougar Card. Participants are able to check out the to-go containers at Fresh Food Company in Moody Towers and Real Food on Campus at Cougar Woods. Participants then fill the container with their meal and later return the to-go container to UH Dining at FFCo or RFoC. Once returned, Dining Services gives you a new clean to-go container.

It is important that containers are returned in a timely manner. This ensures that there are always enough containers available for future use. UH Dining asks all patrons to return the containers within several days of checking them out.

"With such a large campus population, we check out 1,200 containers very quickly," said Amber Arguijo, marketing manager for UH Dining Services. "If they aren't returned within a few days, we run into a problem where we are back to using disposable containers until we get enough in and that essentially defeats the purpose of our efforts."

In an effort to persuade Cougars to reduce waste by choosing the reusable option, if reusable to-go containers are available and a patron chooses the disposable biodegradable containers or is forced to get one because they have not returned their previous container, they will be charged 50 cents for the biodegradable option.

Dining Services is proud to support the university's green initiatives with efforts such as the reusable to-go program. Reusable to-go containers keep 90,000 Styrofoam boxes out of landfills each year.