“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
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