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.
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.
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