RecycleMania
RecycleMania is well under way! Including the two-week “trial period,” we’re in our fifth week of mania, so to speak. Our goal is to reduce waste as much as possible across campus. By “waste,” we mean trash, food waste (everything you dump in those little buckets by the dish windows), and recycling. “But recycling’s not waste!” you may say to yourself. Recycling plays an important role in the production process – it replaces virgin resources while keeping trash out of landfills. But recycling still takes energy. After you recycle that plastic bottle or old coursepack, they must be collected, transported to a facility, sorted, and processed before they can be turned into new products. All of this takes energy and money. The best thing to do is to reduce consumption in the first place – do you really need that bottled water or packaged food from grab-and-go?
Here are some tidbits to think about from the EPA:
Between 1960 and 2007 the amount of waste each person creates has almost doubled from 2.7 to 4.6 pounds per day. The most effective way to stop this trend is by preventing waste in the first place.
Waste prevention, also know as “source reduction,” is the practice of designing, manufacturing, purchasing, or using materials (such as products and packaging) in ways that reduce the amount or toxicity of trash created. Reusing items is another way to stop waste at the source because it delays or avoids that item’s entry in the waste collection and disposal system.
Source reduction, including reuse, can help reduce waste disposal and handling costs, because it avoids the costs of recycling, municipal composting, landfilling, and combustion. Source reduction also conserves resources and reduces pollution, including greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
For more info on recycling and reducing waste, check out the EPA website here.