The Business Case for Plastic-Free Campus Dining
July 28, 2026Sustainability initiatives live and die by the business case. A campus dining director who cares deeply about the environment still must justify the budget. An administrator who’s read every report on microplastics still must get sign-off from the CFO. Alison Cove knows this, and she’s built her entire business model around it.
Alison is the founder and CEO of USEFULL, a company on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic from takeout food service operations on college campuses. Her platform replaces single-use disposable containers and plastic-based reusable containers with a stainless steel, plastic-free reuse system, tracked and managed through a seamless integration with Illumia.
The Higher Ed Geek Podcast sat down with her at Illumia Momentum in Nashville, where she’d just finished a session on the show floor about how USEFULL and Illumia integrate and was coming off a big year prior that included earning Illumia’s Partner of the Year Award.
If the warm and fuzzy doesn’t get you, the economics will
Alison founded USEFULL with two motivations: human health and waste reduction. But the more she has built the business, the more she’s leaned into a third argument that tends to move decisions faster.
“I built a business that saves campuses lots of money. If the warm and fuzzy doesn’t get you, hopefully the economic rationale will.”
Buying single-use packaging over and over is expensive. A reusable stainless steel system, once set up, dramatically reduces that recurring cost. Alison is transparent that her company can’t compete on price with materials like Styrofoam, but she’s also quick to point out that Styrofoam breaks, leaks, and delivers a worse experience. When you add up the cost savings, the improved user experience, and the sustainability story, the total value case of stainless steel is hard to argue against. And when you factor in plastic-free reusable containers in scope 3 emissions conversations, the business and sustainability cases flow together.
Who’s driving demand, and why it matters
Campus sustainability decisions rarely come from a single direction, person, or team. Alison sees demand arriving from students, institutional leadership, and operators, each with their own needs, expectations, and motivations.
“Students are great advocates. They’re not the operators or implementers or decision makers, but they are the ultimate customer. So, schools want to make sure that their student body is happy.”
Beyond student advocacy, Alison sees institutions approaching USEFULL for competitive reasons. Higher education is a business, and campuses know they need to differentiate. Being out front on sustainability, or at least being a fast follower, is increasingly a factor in how institutions market themselves to prospective students.
The research universities are paying attention to their own data
One of the most striking moments in Alison’s session at Illumia Momentum came from the audience. Many of the operators in the room were from research universities, institutions actively studying the health effects of microplastic exposure. And the findings are sobering.
“Research is starting to uncover that Alzheimer’s, diabetes, fertility issues, strokes, and heart attacks are all tied back to microplastics, or plastics more broadly. And so now we have the operators in the room who might not as tied to the research happening at their very own campus. How do we enable that campus to walk the talk?”
The question Alison is pressing on is a powerful one: if your campus is generating the research that links plastic exposure to serious health outcomes, what does it say if your dining hall is still serving food in single-use plastic containers? Closing that gap between the research happening in the lab and the decisions happening in the kitchen is part of what USEFULL is trying to make easier, understandable, and economically viable.
Built entirely on feedback
USEFULL’s product roadmap is not driven by internal assumptions. Every new vessel, return station, and checkout solution has come directly from conversations with clients and partners. The new bowl containers, served at the Illumia Momentum session, were co-designed with a dining partner. The app-optional platform, which allows campuses to run the system without requiring students to download anything, came from campuses telling the team that deep integration alone wasn’t enough to scale.
That philosophy of listening first extends to how Alison runs the whole company.
“Listening is probably the most valuable tool that we can have.”
It’s a simple point, but it cuts to something real. In a space where vendors can get attached to their own product vision, USEFULL has stayed close to the people doing the actual work on campus and lets that feedback drive what gets built next.
The advice Alison leaves campus leaders with
For higher education leaders navigating a moment of significant change, Alison’s closing thought was direct:
“Change can be scary, but innovation breeds opportunity.”
The campuses that lean into this moment, that are willing to rethink how they source packaging, how they track containers, and how they tie sustainability goals to operational efficiency, are the ones that will be best positioned on the other side of it. The tools exist. The integrations are ready. The case, economic, health, sustainability and otherwise, has been made.
Listen to the full conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts!
Curious how Illumia’s integration with USEFULL can help your campus move toward a plastic-free future?
