Back to School Promotional Products Colleges and Universities
Freshman orientations are well underway at colleges and universities as students gear up for the 2016-2017 school year. New students will be bombarded with information about residence life, campus dining, technology services, campus safety and more. Sustainability focused colleges strive to deliver as much information as possible to students in an eco-friendly way. This can be done by reducing or eliminating paper handouts and finding other eco-friendly mediums to promote services on campus.
Information and Technology Services departments need to provide students with important instructions about connecting to the university’s network, reporting IT security incidents, and how to contact tech support just to name a few. Flash drives and microfiber cloths are two popular back to school promotional products for IT departments. Flash drives eliminate the need for paper manuals with pre-loaded data files and students can then reuse the flash drives for school or personal use. Custom USB drives are eco-friendly as they reduce paper waste and many are made from eco-friendly materials such as sustainable bamboo, recycled plastic bottles and even recycled Nike shoes. Microfiber cloths are the safe way to clean smartphones, tablets and computers, eliminating the need for paper towels and harmful cleaning solutions. Microfiber cloths also offer a full color imprint, with a full bleed, edge to edge allowing plenty of room for key IT department messaging.
Like campus IT departments, Residence Life and Dining Services Departments also need to provide incoming students with a plethora of information about school dining programs. As a major part of college life, dining halls tend to produce a lot of waste. Green colleges and universities continue to make eco-friendly changes to on-campus dining programs to reduce waste in both food and materials and make dining operations more energy efficient.
Over the past 15 years, college dining plans have expanded outside of the traditional three meals daily in dormitory dining halls. Today, students have the option of meal plans that expand to other on-campus dining options such as on-campus fast food restaurants and coffee shops, etc. These locations accept meal plan cards and students frequently use their cards at these locations for beverages. Many colleges give one free reusable bottle to dining plan participants allowing recipients to get free fountain beverages at locations that accept meal plan cards.
With more students preferring to eat on the run, sustainably-minded schools are making a push to reduce disposable utensils. Universities have given the gift of Eco Promotional Products’ reusable utensil sets to incoming freshmen participating in dining plans. Utensil sets and reusable food containers are also useful to students when ordering food takeout or delivery.
Filtered water refilling stations are now commonplace at universities. Some sustainable universities have gone a step further and do not sell any commercial bottled water on campus. Instead, they are giving incoming students a reusable water bottle to encourage them to drink from the refill stations.
To see all of Eco Promotional Products’ back to school sale items, click here.
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