Waste Audit (Digging Through Trash)

Waste Audit Report

            Despite the efforts of the DU Sustainability Committee to keep our campus green, we as a school still do not recycle and compost to our full potential. Our largest amount of waste on campus is food. This is shown in the infographic because “Food Waste” is the largest of all the scrambled words. The problem that we found was that while food waste, which is all compostable, is the largest amount of waste produced, compost is only the second largest amount of total waste. This means that much of our food waste is going to the landfill as opposed to the compost where it belongs. This is unfortunate because of the great lengths that DU has gone to create composting on campus and it is a shame that the food that could help enrich soil and grow more crops goes to waste.

            The University of Denver is not the only place that has a food waste problem, however, so that is why this infographic could be relevant to so many other people. Half of the food produced in America goes to waste either because it goes “expired” to avoid lawsuits or simply when people don’t finish their plates. A study done by Stewart Leckie at St. Joseph’s College proved that students were uneducated on the matter of how much food waste they produced. After seeing how much of the students’ food went to waste “it was clearly obvious that we had to make students more aware about the amount of waste they were generating” (Bloom 241). Education is the first step in showing a group of people what they are doing wrong, why it is wrong, and how to fix the problem and this infographic displays those wrong doings.  

 We attempted to make it look as though the image of the dump truck was dumping all the scrambled words out of its load to further show that all those things are at some time turned into waste even if they don’t have to be. Not only does food waste stick out in our infographic but so do things like paper and biodegradable utensils which can either be recycled or composted and are often times simply just thrown away and end up in the landfill. Although food waste seems to be the biggest problem, it is not the only problem and our massive block letters help show this.

Doing this waste audit really shed light on this issue for us. It’s hard to believe or comprehend that out of everything we as students throw away (paper, bags, wrappers, cups etc.) food is the number one contributor to our waste. While going through the trash, we found an endless amount of food, some even unopened and uneaten, that was all going to waste and not even being composted. After seeing that, we could see how it was true that fifty percent of our food goes to waste. If only everybody could see what we saw and learned then we could begin to fix our problem.

           

Works Cited

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It, Jonathon Bloom (241)

Dive, Jeremy Seifert, 2009

Nagel Dining and Composting

Bennett Black, Hammy Wallace, and Ryan Mclean

Performing a waste audit and witnessing the effects of food in the waste stream firsthand gave us a frame of reference for the current state of trash at DU and allowed us the opportunity to examine the various factors that contribute to overall trash production. As we were auditing, we noticed a continuous presence of the white Nagel to-go boxes containing leftovers in trash from all over campus. The popularity of the Nagel dining hall and the amount of the to-go boxes seen throughout the waste audit made Nagel the obvious choice for examining food waste in the DU waste stream. We observed that the majority of people who took their food to go didn’t finish their food and threw the leftovers in the trash, as compost bins are only in dining halls, but we didn’t have enough information to develop a full picture of the situation.  Reducing the amount of trash that could have been diverted to recycling or compost is the first step toward a more efficient waste disposal system, both on campus and in terms of the big picture.

To further explore the role of the typical DU student in creating waste that comes from Nagel, we created a survey that asked a variety of questions regarding their consumption habits. We also wanted to assess student’s level of education on trash separation, so we asked them if they knew how to properly dispose of their diningware. Our survey info supported our hypothesis; the majority of students left Nagel with their food and didn’t finish their meals, and our study also showed that nearly all of those students that left threw away their trash into a bin destined for the landfill. A significant amount of text was used in the infographic because the explanation of the survey was necessary, and the definition of a waste audit was included because the average person would likely not know what it means, and the understanding of that concept is integral to the rest of the information. Transferring the data that we received from surveying students into pie graphs helped us visualize the numbers and gave us a tangible sense of how the waste from Nagel was eventually disposed.

From the observations we made during the waste audit, we assumed education on how to properly separate trash is a major issue, as there was a significant amount of recyclable and compostable goods in the bags destined for the landfill.  To our surprise, the results of our study showed that over 60% of students who regularly ate at Nagel knew how to properly dispose of their dining ware and food container. We wanted to emphasize this fact, as the majority of the food waste found during the audit was from Nagel and it appeared that the issue was one of education on trash separation. Having the graph representing this information stand alone with a small paragraph of explanation highlights what we believe to be the central problem of trash on a college campus. The main hurdle that must be overcome in order to improve the effectiveness of the DU waste disposal system is the availability and convenience of composting on campus. Increasing awareness about readily available composting locations and the addition of compost bins outside of dining halls, especially in high-traffic areas such as Sturm or Driscoll, could greatly increase the amount of correctly disposed waste.

Proposal for Change

Proposal for Change

The United States is the world’s leading waste producer and somehow manages to produce a quarter of the world’s waste, despite the fact that its population is less than 5% of the total world’s population. Paper, food scraps, and plastics dominate this waste and hindering this growth is a constant uphill battle. Research finds that around $165 billion of food is wasted each year and of the 75% of solid waste that can be recycled, only 30% is actually recycled(Huffington Post). America’s waste production is full of bad habits and a lack of education and is ultimately harming our environment with an increased amount of methane gas and destruction of habitats to create landfills to feed our trash addiction. As Humes wrote “As much as 17 percent of the garbage that they were hauling up in the late 1990s and early 2000s consisted of food waste”(Humes, 159) On a much smaller scale, the campus of DU also fails to recycle properly and continues to accumulate a large sum of food waste. If change isn’t implemented as soon as possible, DU will continue to add to America’s trash epidemic. Society as a whole should take action immediately, and whether the spark for change should begin at the DU campus, change is inevitable.

Despite efforts by the University student government to make recycling more accessible to students, our recycling efforts are failing. The university is facing high contamination rates in recycling bins, and high rates of recyclables in trash cans. With contamination, the purpose of recycling bins is pointless. When confronting many students about where they put their recyclables/ garbage many answer “I don’t know”. The University of Denver needs to educate dorm dwellers and all students about both the importance of recycling and the basics of where trash goes.

            Before freshman year begins first-years are required to take an hour long alcohol wise course mapping their drinking habits before you are able to even register for classes. During orientation week first-years are required to sit through a 2 hour lecture on drugs and alcohol. Then two weeks after that, students are required to take another online course about alcohol, which is almost identical to the first one. During the first few weeks at DU students spend a total of 5 hours “learning” about alcohol. This program is seen as a joke and waste of time to many students and therefore is not effective. As described the issue at the school is education. Students continually find themselves in situations where they must guess what bin to put their trash in which often times leads to contamination. For instance, with the paper napkins, most people just throw it into any bin they can even though they can be recycled or composted on campus. Our proposal is that the University of Denver eliminates one of the online alcohol awareness classes and cut the alcohol lecture in half to make way for an environmental program. We understand alcohol safety is important, but overloading students with alcohol course after alcohol course is not effective especially when they are not taken seriously.

            Students will be asked to complete the first online course before orientation week. We believe this will help kick start their interest in sustainability and give them an idea that DU cares about its’ trash production. We do not anticipate this online course to be tedious or difficult but strictly informative. Once students arrive here on campus for orientation week the second phase of the program will begin. Orientation groups will be taken into the dining halls and shown what type of waste goes in which bin and why. Not only will they be educated about waste in the dining halls, they will also be shown what to do with waste they create in their own dorm rooms. Every student has a recycle and normal trash bin in his or her room but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are being utilized correctly. This course will go over what type of waste goes in which of those bins and then also how to properly dispose of it out of the room when the bin is full. This class should last no more than an hour but could make a world of difference on campus.

            Unlike the Alcohol Wise, this class will be immersive and interesting. Instead of teaching in the classroom we will conduct our class in the cafeteria. As David Orr said “indoor classes create the illusion that isolates, from the students call, without apparent irony “the real world”(Orr,14). By doing the class in the cafeteria we will be creating a hands- on experience that will cause little to no confusion about the message. This way, students will see firsthand what garbage goes in what bin. Not only will students learn where to put their trash but they will also learn why. Many students simply throw away their trash in the wrong bins because they are under the impression that that it doesn’t matter. Once students start to comprehend the reason behind separating the trash and what good comes out of we will have much more compliance which will lead to less contamination thus making us greener. As of now, the majority of students do not even know what composting is. How can we expect students to participate in composting if they simply do not even know what it is or the benefits of it?

            As opposed to sending students on a guilt trip about their alcohol consumption, the class we are proposing will not make students feel bad about what they do and don’t recycle. That is not the goal. The goal should be instead to inform and help students begin to make the correct choices in the future and not worry about how they used to handle their waste. We believe this would be much more effective and informative and also give people a good overall feeling of the program. If students are convinced that we are trying to help them and steer them in the right direction as opposed to scaring them into to changing like Alcohol Wise does, we will have much more cooperation and participation. As participants ourselves of Alcohol Wise, we also noticed that there was too much reading followed by a quiz. This is not effective because no teenager wants to read pages of text especially when it is only making them feel guilty. We plan to incorporate pictures and infographics which get the point across easier, quicker, and more effectively than paragraphs of endless information that most simply do not even read. The message will be simple: where to put what trash and why it matters.

            If these courses are to be implemented it could have a huge impact not only on food waste and composting but also on our overall trash production and recycling. This could push DU in the right direction towards a much greener campus and students who are educated on the subject of sustainability. These classes could potentially set DU apart from other institutions as far as sustainability as well. After gaining the support of the entire student community DU will be on the right track to be sustainable and green.

George Apregan, Jp Bruner, Jake Rogers

            

Horrors of Nagel

Hammy Wallace, Bennet Black & Ryan McLean

            

            Based on the data collected from the trash audit of DU, we believe that the dinning halls need to start focusing on how to provide people with waste convenience rather than consumer convenience.  Nagel is a perfect example of how poorly the University of Denver promotes its students to properly dispose of waste.  Nagel provides students with many conveniences, almost all of which produce unnecessary waste.  If DU took the small steps to correct these waste issues at Nagel, DU’s ecological footprint would be minimized. Although some of these changes would need to be funded by the school, they are necessary steps that a school of higher education must take to set an example for the rest of the world to follow.  The information gathered from the trash audit showed that an unacceptable amount of waste in the landfill bins could actually be recycled or composted.  Although education plays a major role in the improper disposal of materials, our data showed that the majority of people know where to dispose of their plastic and food waste; it is just inconvenient for them to do so.

            Although Nagel is one of the most popular dinning halls on DU’s Campus, few people stop to think about the consequences of their Nagel meals.  First off, Nagel only provides students with to-go boxes and paper plates, never reusable dinning wear.  Even if a student sits in Nagel and finishes all the food on his or her plate they are still forced to create waste by composting their plates. Although many people don’t see compost as a negative form of waste, it is always better to reuse materials instead of just disposing of it after one use. More importantly 57 percent of people who get food from Nagel leave with their food.  Of those who leave with the food, close to 90 percent of them throw away their food scrapes and dinning wear into the landfill trash bins.  The most reasonable change would be that Nagel must install a dishwashing facility adjacent to the dinning area.  Although this is a very expensive change, it is the best way to cut out the waste produced in Nagel. With the new technologies of this time, convenience has become a very important aspect in designing a product.  These new “eco-friendly” compostable dinning wear are great, but in reality it is only making DU less eco-friendly.  As strasser points out, "The new consumer culture changed ideas about throwing things away, creating a way of life that incorporated technological advances, organizational changes, and new perspectives, a lifestyle that linked products made for one-time use…" (Strasser, 200) Clearly the right thing to do is eliminate one-time use dinning wear and clean real plates.  If this is too big of a change to make so soon, it would make sense to at least add more composting bins throughout the school.  Nearly 70 percent of students know where to dispose of their dinning wear, but only six percent of them actually return to a dinning hall to compost their waste.  The problem here is not education nor ignorance, but a lack of caring and pure laziness.  A cheap solution to the amount of food waste going to landfills is to provide students with more opportunities to compost their excess food.

            Another source of waste is the large meal portions that allow students to order one meal and not have to think about returning for seconds.  The majority of the 80 people surveyed by the group stated that they normally cannot finish an entire Nagel portion.  Nearly 60 percent of the student body at DU cannot finish a full meal from Nagel.  This number is not acceptable and can easily be fixed.  If anyone from Sodexo took the time to observe how much food is being thrown out, they would have to agree that the portion sizes must be changed.  This is the problem with the most simple solution, yet is produces so much unnecessary waste every day.  In today’s times there are many small solutions that can make such a big difference the only problem is that people don’t care enough to make these small changes in their lives.  As Capra states, “There are solutions to the major problems of our time, some of them even simple.  But they require a radical shift in our perceptions, our thinking, our values (capra, 4).”  There is no excuse for the massive portions, because Sodexo would actually benefit from the smaller portions.  Although many students would be infuriated by the smaller sizes, our community at DU needs to be more aware of the changes that need to be made.

            After extensive research, the problem is quite clear; food waste is our most common waste and is also the easiest waste to dispose of. Composting is simple and efficient, it should be everywhere, but it isn’t. In Nagel we are letting hundreds of pounds of food out the door every day, only to be wasted. Change has to start somewhere and we have the opportunity to start at Nagel. Implementing non-disposable dishware would not solve the problem entirely but it would be a great start. In the end, we just need to keep taking small steps forward and solving Nagel can be DU’s next step towards an eco-friendly campus.

Revamping the System: Our Proposal for Change on Campus

“Students learn, without anyone ever telling them, that they are helpless to overcome the frightening gap between ideals and reality. What is desperately needed are (a) faculty and administrators who provide role models of integrity, care, and thoughtfulness and (b) institutions capable of embodying ideals wholly and completely in all of their operations” (ORR, 14)

The Problem:

Simply stated, we are not doing enough to divert waste from the landfill. Despite a waste system on campus that includes composting and recycling, 40% of what we send to the landfill can be composted and 20% could be diverted to recycling. This finding indicates a larger systematic problem of the university’s waste system, as well as the under-education of the campus community about the waste stream.  Composting is only present in the dining halls, and recycling seems to be placed randomly around campus. The diverse student body comes from differing levels of knowledge and practice of recycling, yet an education opportunity is lost with the assumption that we all know the difference between the numbered plastics and corn-based compostable wear and that neither of these have to head to the landfill. A uniform understanding, or at least education towards one, is needed to move the whole community forward.

The problem of trash on a world scale is invisible and ignored, hidden inside black plastic bags and taken “away” once it is picked up from the curb. Changing the way we as a campus dispose of our waste would benefit the university in both economic and environmental terms. But much more importantly, The University of Denver is obligated to not only teach ideals and theory in the classroom, but to embody that theory in action. There is an opportunity to teach environmental awareness and stewardship to future leaders by engraining it in our daily habit of throwing things away.

The Investigation:

The waste audit our class preformed with Chad King along with our individual waste records forced us to look at the hidden problem of trash. Literally digging through garbage made the potential and need for change apparent. We found a massive amount of food waste and compostable material within each trash bag. This indicates many people are either taking their food from the dining halls and disposing of leftovers elsewhere, or getting food off campus and bringing home the waste. The combination of the high amount of food waste generated by college students with the lack of availability of composting around campus results in the extreme amount of compostable materials going into the general waste stream. Based off our waste audit data, 40% of the 2.5 million pounds of trash DU sends to the landfill each year, adding up to 1 million pounds, could be diverted to composting. Organic matter rotting in landfills produces a significant amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas (EPA). 20% of the waste we are throwing away could be recycled. Our group found that much of that 20% was from contamination of bags of recycling with food waste or trash that was thrown into the wrong bin. Despite the best efforts of some to divert our waste, contamination stands in the way of successfully decreasing the mountain of garbage the university produces. Our group found the root of this problem in the lack of education or discussion of our recycling practices on campus. It was unknown to us before this class that contaminated recycling must all go to the landfill, and that fact is not known by the campus as a whole. It is easy to see recycling bins around campus and composting in the dining hall and believe that DU has a sustainable waste system and it is easy to allow green washing to distract us from the inefficiencies of the system - allowing apathy to control the personal responsibility of disposing of trash properly.

To further our investigation our group sought additional data of the university’s waste system. What few numbers Chad King was able provide us with are found in jumbled spreadsheets attached in an email saying “sorry I have very limited numbers on this”. This incomplete and confusing data indicates a broken waste system that allows the problem of trash to remain hidden.  With our infographic we seek to make the invisible problem of trash visible and understand the jumbled numbers in a concrete way. By filling in the mountains with garbage, we mirror the mountain of trash we bury each year, and we assign value to raw data. We also call for change because a system of disposal that is so opaque and ignored is a broken system.

The Solution: systems change and education

We propose a campus wide overhaul of our waste disposal system. Instead of having bins placed every 20 feet around campus, we suggest waste stations in planned centralized locations around campus. Each waste station would have landfill, compost and recycling bins. In having compost beyond the dining halls, food being eaten on the go and in dorm rooms can be diverted. Efficiency increases by centralizing and always having recycling and composting next to trash cans. Stations make it easier to sort, and always having three options will increase the visibility of the different facets of the waste stream and reduce contamination due to convenience. Additionally we propose the use of different colored bags to denote the waste thrown away, green compostable bags in every compost bin, blue for recycling, white or black for landfill. This will increase the efficiency of sorting our garbage when picked up from each bin, eliminating the operational contamination that is sure to happen when all the garbage looks the same.

We currently have data about where the most trash is being thrown away on campus. By taking these numbers and using them to re-design the distribution of the new waste stations we would eliminate bins that do not fill each day, reducing labor for our facilities workers. Sustainability needs to be engrained in the greater campus planning in order to provide enough efficient infrastructures to ensure increase in diversion rates.

The University of Colorado at Boulder is a leader in sustainable waste diversion efforts. With efficient campus wide recycling and a recycling processing center on campus, CU has successfully created a campus wide system that works. In 2004 CU started composting in dining halls, and added “behind the scenes composting” and compostable to-go ware. This is very similar to DU’s practices, however, CU has had composting in every bathroom since 2007, providing locations to dispose of to-go ware as well as composting for paper towels. CU is currently expanding to desk-side composting, allowing students and employees of the university to have personal compost bins they can empty into bathroom compost. Though they are still in the pilot stage of campus wide composting, CU provides an example of a much larger university constantly working to transform their waste system. (“compost” and “sustainability”)

We are proposing a switch to waste stations rather than just the addition of composting around campus because we believe a re-evaluation of the waste system as a whole is needed. Transitioning to waste stations forces a deeper understanding of the existing waste stream data. Instead of haphazardly placing composting around campus, we would like to produce large scale, systematic and sustainable change. A new system will inherently increase the general campus community’s awareness and knowledge of the waste stream. The infrastructural changes will increase the consciousness of our habits of throwing things away because they must be changed to fit into the new system. Change does not allow the system to remain invisible and forgotten, but rather forces the increase of education through action. To borrow words from Fritjof Capra “the problems of our time…are systemic problems, which means they are interconnected and interdependent...From the systemic point of view the only viable solutions are those that are ‘sustainable’”(Capra 4). We need to look at the whole system in order to make waste diversion sustainable on campus.

Works Cited

EPA."Basic Information about Food Waste." Environmental Protection Agency. Web 7 Nov. 2012.

<http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/organics/food/fd-basic.htm>.

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor,

1996. Print.

"Compost Expansion Areas - Pilot Study." Compost Expansion Areas - Pilot Study. Web. 8 Nov.

2012. <http://ecenter.colorado.edu/recycling/compost/487-compost-expansion-areas-pilot-

study>.

Orr, David W. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Washington, DC:

Island, 1994. Print.

"Sustainability on Campus." University of Colorado Boulder. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.

<http://www.colorado.edu/sustainability/sustainability-campus>.

Cooper Leith, Mariah Foley, Emma Naatz

Infographic Report

As we were conducting the waste audit, our group was overwhelmed by the noticeably large amount of food waste that compiled large amounts of the general trash bags. Although there is composting offered in the dining halls, it seemed that many people were eating food on the go and away from dining halls – causing the outdoor trash bins to be overwhelmingly filled with food waste. Using this as the basis for our infographic, we decided to make the damage being done by wasting so much food extremely apparent by visually comparing the amount of food we are wasting to the amount of actual post-consumer waste that must to go to the landfill. We use the recognizable image of the Colorado license plate as the main image in our inforgraphic in order to create a sense of commonality between the reader and their waste. Within and around the license plate we used concise sentences filled with shocking statistics to grab the reader’s attention and pull them in to read more.

Over half of what is thrown away on campus can be composted or recycled. This means that if we composted everything we are able to on campus, we would be sending 40% less waste to the landfill every quarter. In addition to the large amount of compostable waste going to the landfill, we have huge amounts of potentially recyclable materials also being sent straight to the landfill. With 20% of the trash per quarter being composed of recyclables, if we recycled and composted we could reduce the amount of waste we send to the landfill every quarter by 60%. These diversion rates need to be changed, but they will never be changed if the student population doesn’t know how big of a problem we are creating. The waste on campus is our waste – we make the problem, therefore we can fix it. The infographic aims to make it clear how much we could be helping to produce if we simply started to divert our trash stream. As Jonathan Bloom points out, “Anytime institutions have the chance to reduce both their expenses and environmental impacts without any upfront costs, they are probably going to jump at the chance” (243). The DU campus has already invested in the “upfront costs” with the composting options being brought into dining halls and outdoor recycling bins in the last 2 years. Now that we have already faced the problem of expenses, we need to increase the amount of use these bins are getting. With the options around campus, however limited they are, it is relatively easy to throw waste into the correct bins.  

Our infographic aims to educate the reader about the high cross contamination of the general trash bins on campus. Even though there is still a high amount of post-consumer waste being thrown in the trash bins, the amount of compostable or recyclable materials outweighs this post-consumer waste.  We hope our infographic inspires students to reverse this trend and start decreasing our footprint on campus.

Work Cited

Bloom, Jonathan. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away nearly Half of It's Food (and What We Can Do About It). Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010. Print.

Cooper Leith, Emma Naatz, Mariah Foley

DU's Mountain of Trash: An Infographic

Cooper Leith, Mariah Foley, Emma Naatz

Jake R., Greta Z., and Ryan R. - Trash Audit Infographic

Jake Ruttenberg, Greta Zableckas, Ryan Rogers: Our Trash’s Future at DU

            Since beginning our enrollment here at The University of Denver it has been clear to us that this school prides itself on being environmentally friendly. However, after conducting our trash audit we have learned that the vast majority of DU’s efforts of being sustainable are in vain. Either trash is finding its way into the compost and recycling, in turn contaminating it, or the compost and recycling is simply being thrown away with the rest of the trash. As a result, our approximate 61% recycle and compost potential is nearly impossible to achieve. Our proposal for change is two-fold. First, as with most issues, proper education is vital. Secondly, we need to make the topic of trash, recycling and compost more visible and prevalent. When both criteria are met, DU can truly live up to its standard of being green and become a role model for other schools and communities to follow.

           

Identifying our Problem:

            Al Gore was one of the first people that really brought to light the issue of the way we treat our planet. “The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences.” As such, it is our responsibility as not only inhabitants of this planet, but as students of this university to do all we can in avoiding the point of no return he so often speaks of. One of the leading causes of global warming is the emission of green house gases like methane from landfills. To reduce our school’s impact on the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site (and in turn, the planet), we must learn to recycle and compost more while throwing away trash less. Unfortunately, this is much more difficult than it would appear. More often than not, a recyclable or compostable material ends up being wasted by being thrown in the trash or a single piece of trash ends up in the recycling or compost, contaminating all reusable goods inside. If someone is uninformed enough to not know where a certain item goes, we would rather they throw away a recyclable or compostable item in the trash, wasting only one item’s reusability, than throw away something non-recycle or non-compostable in the wrong bin, wasting numerous item’s reusability.

            This issue has many underlying reasons. For one, people simply lack the education about what’s trash, what isn’t and in which bin it belongs. Secondly, there is limited access to recycling and compost bins and an excess of trash bins. Combined with the third reason, a lack of initiative, people are lead to simply throw away their recyclable or compostable materials in the trash simply because its more convenient. For instance, not many people will walk out of their way to ensure that their compostable coffee cup makes it into the compost if they only have 10 minutes in between classes when the only bins nearby are for trash. However, as Al Gore argues, if there was ever a time to care and have a sense of urgency about our planet, it would be now.

Beginning our Investigation:

            Our investigation began with our class’s participation in a trash audit. From October 8-11 we took apart and sorted through 57 bags of trash and recycling from 4 sites, Johnson-MacFarlane Halls, Nagel and Nelson, and the outside trash and recycling bins. We calculated that, on average, each bag contained 39% trash that would go to the landfill, 21% recyclable material and 40% compostable material. Although these numbers may seem promising, here’s the catch: nearly all of these bags were contaminated. That 61% recyclable and compostable material is essentially useless. Unless someone is physically going through each bag, separating the trash from the recyclable from the compost, all of the reusable materials are sent to the landfill anyway. This part of our investigation alone has lead us to our thesis.

Forming our Solution for Change:

            As Orr quoted Wiesel in his book Earth In Mind, the problem with education is that “[i]t emphasizes theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience” (8). The first step in our solution for change is just that, an education that focuses realistic and practical applications of our knowledge of trash.

            During orientation week, we were required to attend at least 3 meetings about drug and alcohol use, nearly all of which overlapped in content and became redundant. I propose that we allot one of those blocks of time, or even create a new one, for a mandatory seminar on trash. People will be shown exactly what is considered trash, recycling and compost and exactly where they belong to be thrown away.

            The educational seminar during orientation week will surely hit home for a few days or two, but after some time people will lose interest or simply forget what they’ve been taught. Additionally, as Robin Nagle puts it, one of the larger problems with trash is that it “is generally overlooked because we create so much of it so casually and so constantly that it’s a little bit like paying attention to, I don’t know, to your spit, or something else you just don’t think about.” As such, our second solution is visibility and prevalence. If each dining hall were to have their own weekly trash report, containing information regarding how much was composted and how much was thrown away, people may begin to realize the impact they have and make healthier decisions. Additionally, there needs to be a greater access to the variety of bins. Each trash bin outside consists of 50% trash, and 50% recycling and compost. Rather than spend $1000 to buy a new trash or recycling bin, how about we turn all for one into one for all? The circular bin can physically divided into three labeled and color-coded parts with three separate trash bags: one for trash, one of recycling and one for compost. That way, no matter where you are on campus, if you see a trash bin, you also see one for recycling and one for compost.

            Just like you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, you can place all the right tools in the hands of our community’s members, but you can’t ensure that they’ll use them properly. It’s impossible to guarantee that every single person at DU will throw away their trash, recyclables and compost in the proper bin 100% of the time but what we can do is reduce the chance that they will. With improved education, visibility and prevalence we believe that we are doing as much as we can to reduce the margin of error, putting only a manageable, yet necessary fraction of responsibility into the hands of our fellow peers. 

I.      Orr, David. "Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect.” Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect: David W. Orr: 9781559632959: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.

II.    Gore, Al. "On Katrina, Global Warming." On Katrina, Global Warming. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0912-32.htm>.

III.  "The Believer - Interview with Robin Nagle." The Believer. The Believer, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://believermag.com/issues/201009/?read=interview_nagle>.

Jake Ruttenberg, Greta Zableckas, Ryan Rogers: Our Waste Audit Report

            Participating in the trash audit and creating our infographic has taught us that The University of Denver has great potential to recycle and compost. Unfortunately though, many students and faculty members of DU are uneducated about the topic. As Orr quoted Wiesel in his book Earth In Mind, the problem with education is that “[i]t emphasizes theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience” (8). With hands-on activities like our trash audit, we believe we can educate DU in the proper manner.

            Our infographic is based off of the information we gathered as a class through our trash audit. From October 8 to 11, we physically took apart 57 bags of trash and recycling taken from Johnson-MacFarlane Halls, Nagel and Nelson, and outside trash and recycling bins. On average, each trash bag consisted of 21% recyclable material, 40% compostable material, and 39% trash. Unfortunately though, nearly all the recycling and compost is either thrown away in the trash or contaminated by it. These numbers are proof that, with proper education, a large percentage of what is thrown away can be reused instead of being sent to the landfill.

            As the majority of students and faculty at DU and uneducated about the topics of trash, recycling and compost, they are our intended audience with this infographic. We created four pie charts, all of which are split into thirds (trash, recycling, compost), posted against a background of each of the four sites we collected our data from. Each third is a weight in kilograms converted to a percent of the total weight. Lastly, we have one final pie chart consistent of all of our information displayed in a similar manner.

            On average, Johnson-MacFarlane Halls and Nagel and Nelson recycle, compost and throw away roughly the same amount of trash as a percentage. However, The average weight of a trash bag from Nagel and Nelson is roughly 13 times heavier than that of Johnson-MacFarlane.

            In regards to outside trash and recycling bins, the trash bins consist of only 50% trash and the recycling bins consist of only 50% recycling. Similarly to the majority of the bags we investigated, that 50% recycling has all gone to waste though because it has been contaminated.

            DU has a potential to recycle and compost 61% of its trash and send only 39% to the landfill. Without the education that Orr speaks of though, our efforts continue to be in vain.

Proposal For Change & Infographic (Allie, Catherine, Meghan)

Humankind is obsessed with cleanliness. It is our natural instinct to try and find a way to be clean, dry, warm and overall satisfied. This concept is not often realized by our society because we simply make ourselves comfortable in these senses almost subconsciously. There is nothing wrong with this instinct because it is primal for any creature to want to be content but the method at which our society goes about doing this involves creating a lot of unnecessary waste. We have identified this to be the root of the problem of which we will suggest a route of change in our community here at the University of Denver to make our school a more sustainable and less wasteful place.

            The bathroom is probably the most common place where humans can do things to put themselves in a comfortable and clean state. We are constantly washing our hands, showering and prepping ourselves in the bathroom multiple times throughout the day. These processes of prepping and cleaning require a lot of products and materials each time. In places where there are reusable towels and other items, the production of waste is not that great because they are getting multiple uses out of these items. But, in the DU bathrooms for example, hundreds of thousands of paper towels are being thrown away every single day. In the residence hall bathrooms the bins are often overflowing with used paper towels, so much that they are even covering the ground surrounding the bins. Before doing the waste audit and learning about the wastefulness of our world in my Freshman Seminar class, this sight did not bother me. Now that I know the severe problems that are created because of it, a proposal for change in the DU community seems absolutely necessary.

            Another things that enhances the need for a change regarding the amount of paper towel waste is the fact that there are multiple problems and issues that are created because of how many we simply throw away. Firstly, vast amounts of trees are being cut down to create these paper towels and there is no way to replace all of those trees. According to 1800recycling.com, the paper industry is the third largest contributor to global warming. All of our paper product waste is becoming an issue to the health of our earth. The second issue is that at DU specifically, we could be composting these paper towels instead of throwing them away and adding them to the landfill. 1800recycling.com also found that the average American discards 700 pounds or more of paper each year. If there are a total of 5,000 undergraduate students at DU, we are adding 3,500,000 pounds of paper waste to the landfills each year. This a problem because there is only so much space on the earth and if we keep creating these huge amounts of landfill waste, our world will be completely taken over by trash someday. Capra states, “the major problems of our time…are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.” DU is only one tiny part of the gigantic problem our world faces when dealing with paper waste.

            The third and final major problem has to do with education. A large reason why these paper towels are not being composted is because the students of DU do not know that they are compostable in the first place. There is also a huge lack of knowledge about contamination of compostable and recyclable items. According to research done by Stanford University, contamination occurs when non-recyclable or non-compostable items are mixed with recyclable or compostable items. Contamination can also occur when recyclable or compostable items are placed in the wrong bins. If an item is smeared with materials such as oil, grease, or certain foods, then it is considered contaminated because it cannot be physically recycled or composted. The dining halls at DU such as Nelson and Nagel make it possible and easy to compost things in the right bins and avoid contamination but there is still a chance someone will place on thing in the wrong bin and cause all of the contents in that bin to be contaminated.

            These problems were highlighted through the information we collected during the waste audit but it was generally the actually process of going through the trash bags that lead me to these issues. The only specific information that was collected about paper towels being composted was that it made up 12.8%, 14.6% and 37.5% of the total compost amount of Nelson and Nagel on 3 different days. This data is a little bit surprising because one would think that paper towels would make up a much higher percentage of the total compost considering how much we use. When doing the physical waste audit, my group and I had to go through multiple bags that were 98% paper towels and 2% other items that one uses in the bathroom. These paper towels were therefore declared contaminated because composting can only take place when there is absolutely zero contamination on the elements being composted.

            According to the book Garbology by Edward Humes, archaeologist Bill Rathje states  “we have plenty of room to keep burying our trash until we find a better plan. Space for trash, in other words, is not the problem.” We realized that our society has no problem throwing away things such as the compostable paper towels because of facts like this one. This notion is what caused our group to identify the severity of this problem and feel the need to create a proposal for change. The visible evidence of the number of bags of paper towels that we encountered hit home for each member of our group.

Based on our data and the reaction we all felt after seeing these paper towels, our group came up with a few different proposals for change. Our first solution is simply to begin composting paper towels in the bathrooms at DU. If we placed a composting bin in the bathrooms of the residence halls along with the trash bin, similar to the ones in Nelson and Nagel, composting paper towels would be made accessible to students. The second part of this solution is extremely important, and that is education. Our Infographic explains what causes a paper towel to become contaminated, so if it were to be placed in the bathrooms along with the bins, there wouldn’t be such a high risk of contamination of these paper towels. Having only one bin in the bathrooms, leaves people only one choice of where to throw their trash. The combination of the Infographic and the different bins would cause people to feel the need to dispose of their trash correctly.

There have been previous problems that have come up when addressing the possibility of getting another bin for the bathrooms in the residence halls. Issues of multiple bins being too much work for maintenance have come up and we have a solution to this issue. We would develop a composting committee, in an effort to get students on campus involved in composting and it wouldn’t require much work. There are already composting bins on the bottoms floors of Halls, Nagel, and Nelson so we would only need to get a bin for J-Mac. Then we could set up a system where students who are interested would be responsible for taking the composting bins in the bathroom down to the bins in the main lobby. This way, there would be very little extra work for the maintenance except emptying the composting bins in the main lobby. The students at DU are very environmentally aware thanks to previous changes made on campus by the Environmental Team and Sustainability Committee and therefore we believe they would be more than happy to join the composting committee. By putting this solution into effect, we are hoping that the outcome would be a highly reduced amount of trash caused by paper towel waste. Also, we are hoping that making people more aware about the trash they are producing and where it’s going to go, will make them want to reduce their trash production in the first place.

 The institution of reusable towels is our second solution. This would completely remove the problem of having paper towels all together because there would never be any paper towel waste. Students would be informed before coming to school in the fall to bring their own hand towels to use in the residence hall bathrooms. Cubbyholes or racks could be installed in the bathrooms for students to place their hand towels to use on a regular basis. Cubbyholes could also be a useful place for students to keep their bathroom items in general. The trashcans in the bathroom would only be filled with trash that has to go to the landfill instead of paper towels. This would also deplete the problem of contamination and reduce the amount of trash that DU has to send to the landfill. Reusing our towels will hopefully make students aware that we are trying to leave less of an impact on earth and that even the little things can help decrease waste production.

Our final proposal for change is the institution of electronic hand dryers. This solution would also complete deplete the problem of creating paper towel waste in general and they are extremely sanitary. A previous problem that has come up with the installation of paper towels is the amount of energy that they use. Our group has looked into this issue and done some research and have found a hand dryer that is extremely energy and eco-friendly. The XLERATOR hand dryer uses 80% less energy than all other hand dryers and according to the XLERATOR website, has 95% cost savings in comparison to paper towel costs. Green Spec also lists this hand dryer as the most environmentally and energy friendly hand dryer in comparison to all others. Though these hand dryers are pricy, it would be worth it in the sense that it would contribute to decreasing DU’s carbon footprint by creating less waste in the bathrooms.


In order to put these changes into place, we are very open to discussing and collaborating with the maintenance and cleaning staff of the University of Denver. We hope that members of the Environmental Team and the Sustainability committee would be interested in helping institute these changes as well. Our initial goal with these proposals is to start small. Therefore, we will just be focusing on composting or reducing the waste of paper towels in the residence halls. Taking baby steps is the best way for DU to enact this change because we need to be thorough to be effective in creating more environmentally friendly and overall stable campus. Communication is the key to success and that is why we will be talking to groups around campus to everyone from the maintenance staff to the Environmental Team in order to enact this change on campus.

In an interview conducted by Believer Magazine, Robin Nagle stated, “Garbage is generally overlooked because we create so much of it so casually and so constantly that it’s a little bit like paying attention to, I don’t know, to your spit, or something else you just don’t think about. You—we—get to take it for granted that, yeah, we’re going to create it, and, yeah, somebody’s going to take care of it, take it away.” Her statement accurately depicts the common mindset of the students at DU when it comes to paper towels. Our group wants to change that stereotype, and we believe we can with one of our three proposals for change. All it takes is a little collaboration and education to truly make not only a difference on campus, but also a difference for the health of our one and only mother earth.

 Work Cited:

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. (1996). New York, NY: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. Print.

Carp, Alex. “An Interview With Robin Nagle.” The Believer. September 2010. Online.

Dombrowski, Margie M. “Going Paper Towel-less.” 1800recycling. October 2009. http://1800recycling.com/2009/10/going-paper-towel-less/. Website.

Humes, Edward. Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash. (2012). New York, NY: Avery. Print.