The 2024-2025 school year brings a new addition to the vending machines and free supplies in the Sayles-Hill Campus Center. Mounted on the wall across from the mailboxes now stands the result of a hygiene equity pilot program run through the Office of Sustainability: a machine dispensing free, eco-friendly laundry sheets..
The pilot machine began dispensing laundry sheets around the fourth week of classes after a month-long delay due to a software glitch. The machine is sourced from Generation Conscious (GenCo), a company focused on providing low-income and first-generation students with access to hygiene products. GenCo advertises their laundry sheets as using 97% less water and 95% less carbon than the average laundry pod. GenCo seeks to employ people underrepresented in environmental work to operate their machines at a wage nearly twice Minnesota’s minimum wage. GenCo hopes that this work experience and related professional development initiatives will help diversify environmental careers and help center environmental justice initiatives. Currently, Carleton’s machine does not operate under the GenCo employment model and is instead operated by the Sustainability Office.
The journey to the machine’s installation began several years ago when Eli Watt ’25 proposed the installation of 14 machines across campus. They said, “this program is really a push for more focus around hygiene equity and environmental justice at Carleton.” After talks with Facilities and the Dean of Students Office, Watt’s proposal was denied. A scaled-down proposal for a one-machine pilot program was also denied funding. Watt then took the proposal to the Carleton Student Association last year, which approved the purchase of one machine and set of sheets based on the results of a hygiene access survey.
Director of Sustainability Sarah Fortner explained that processes to get project approval often follow trajectories like Watt’s. The office generally focuses on student-developed individual projects with the intent to serve the campus or broader area community. Initiatives often come up against a variety of barriers, such as funding, ongoing time commitments and unanticipated feedback from the community.
“My job is to help steer conversations productively and to help students reflect on feedback, to get projects from the point of ‘this wouldn’t work’ to ‘we could pilot this,’” Fortner said.
The aim of the waste-free, accessible, sustainable hygiene product (WASH) initiative is to address both the environmental and socioeconomic issues that doing laundry can present to students. From a financial perspective, purchasing detergent can be a very real barrier to hygiene access, especially when students face more pressing financial concerns. From a sustainability perspective, the machine’s laundry sheets eliminate the plastic packaging used in most other detergent products, and their light weight reduces their emissions during transportation.
Initiatives similar to WASH have been implemented at several of Carleton’s peer institutions. At Williams College, the programming has an approval rating of 97%, with students’ primary complaints centering around the machine’s being out of sheets or too far from their dorms. Amherst College also installed the same machine and received similar positive student feedback before the program was discontinued due to funding and administrative barriers.
The placement of the machine in Sayles has the potential to both support and harm the success of the initiative. Although the location is very convenient for other essential aspects of day-to-day student life, it is also very visible.“I feel like it’s a great idea, but it would be more beneficial if the machine was more inconspicuous because it could be embarrassing to use,” Bella Fiorentini ’28 said.
The Sustainability Office hopes to see significant community use over the coming weeks. Originally, they had hoped to see around 25% of the student body use the machine, but with the delay in beginning operation, they are currently redesigning their evaluative measures and will take stock around the eighth week of classes. The machine has had to be refilled several times so far.
Plans for the future of the pilot program remain up in the air as data continues to come in to be evaluated. Watts is hopeful that several more machines may be able to be installed across campus, not necessarily in every laundry room — as originally proposed — but in convenient, high-traffic areas. This potential next step would rely on access to additional funding, either through CSA or other administrative means.