Queen's U to Place Recycling Stations
(U.S.): Sixty new bins, including organic waste bins, will be distributed across campus in an effort to make sorting waste on campus more prevalent and accessible.
Auburn U Reduces Facilities Filter Waste
After a recent partnership with a large filter manufacturer, the university reduced the amount of filters from nearly 30,000 per year to 4,549 in fiscal year 2013 leading to conserved electricity and monetary savings.
U Wisconsin Green Bay Composts Pre-Consumer Food Scraps
Attempting to reduce the amount of organic material it sends to the landfill, the university now sends all pre-consumer food waste from its' dining halls 50 miles to the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh for composting.
Western Washington U Students Pilot Rentable Mug Program
In an effort to reduce waste and money spent on handling that waste, students from a Campus Sustainability Planning Studio class initiated Project MUG this fall using grant funding from the university's green fee. Project MUG enables students to rent a reusable mug for beverages.
Sullivan County CC Breaks Ground on New Compost Facility
Food waste from two food service areas and campus offices will be composted at the college's new open bay composting facility. An anonymous donation to the college affords four stipends of $500 for students to operate the facility during the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014.
U Georgia Introduces Solar-Powered Waste Compactors
The university is co-locating its outside trash and recycling receptacles by installing 30 BigBelly Solar compactors across campus to make it easier to recycle. The recycling bins are set up for single-stream recycling.
U Maryland Initiates Post-Consumer Waste Audit
In an effort to focus their outreach efforts, facilitators of the ongoing audit aim to reduce the amount of trash bags used and increase the amount of composted and recycled material.
Alfred State College Introduces Waste Reduction Initiatives
In an effort to continue to reduce waste on campus, the college now works with compostable packaging and service items in its new Ever Green coffeehouse. Also, The Terrace, the college's main all-you-can-eat dining venue, now offers reusable takeout containers.
U California Irvine Receives Accolades from EPA
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently acknowledged the university for its zero waste and food recovery efforts. The zero waste program diverts 83 percent of the campus’ total waste materials from landfills by recycling, reusing and composting. The university has increased its food waste diversion from 90 tons in 2010 to 500 tons in 2012, when it joined the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge.
Wesleyan U Installs Solar-Powered Waste Compactors
The university recently installed four BigBelly Solar trash compactors to increase its recycling rate and reduce the number of collection bins necessary, which also decreases labor involved in collection of the materials.
Duke U Builds Cardboard Structure to Conceptualize Waste
Reusing boxes from the recent student move-in, Sustainable Duke, Duke Arts Festival, and Duke Sanitation and Recycling Services collaborated on Fort Duke to break the world record and enable students to visualize the move-in waste stream.
Emory U Partners for Textile Recycling
(U.S.): Reducing its waste load and carbon footprint, the university's new partnership with re:loom allows old uniforms to be remade into new products. In summer 2013, the university donated over 100 pounds of custodial uniforms and 300 pounds of athletic uniforms to the service.
St. Olaf College Students Open Thrift Shop
(U.S.): Attempting to connect the dots between what students purchase and what they discard, the newly opened thrift shop collects unwanted items from the end-of-year on-campus move out. Proceeds from the store support environmental projects on campus and local organizations.
U Arkansas Little Rock Installs Bottle Fill Station
In an effort fulfill the university Sustainability Committee’s mission to conserve resources and protect the environment, the Donaghey Student Center’s new water bottle filling stations help reduce the school’s waste stream. In the first two weeks over 400 bottles were filled.
Auburn U Begins Move-In Recycling Program
With the help of staff volunteers, the newly introduced recycling program Move-in Mania enables students living on campus to recycle cardboard, #1 & #2 plastic and aluminum and steel cans. Of the 77 tons of material collected, 15 tons were cardboard.
Franklin & Marshall College Implements Waste Reduction Measures
As part of its sustainability plan, the college has installed 22 water bottle filling stations, discontinued the sale of single-use water bottles at campus dining facilities, distributed 2,500 reusable bottles to all students, implemented single stream recycling, and deployed two solar trash compactors.
U Florida Athletic Stadium to Offer Composting
In line with its zero waste commitment, the university’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium will offer composting and recycling, whereas previously only waste and recycling were offered. Labeling and increased staffing will help to eliminate contamination of either waste stream.
Elmhurst College Hosts No Waste Lunch
Promoting green lifestyles to the incoming freshman class, the college’s no waste lunch efforts included compostable napkins, plates and silverware, and a team of volunteers to person the waste receptacles.
U Adelaide Feeds Community from Surplus Ingredients
(Australia): Partnering with OzHarvest Food Rescue, the Office of Sustainability recently fed more than 500 campus community and general public members with campus food that would have otherwise been thrown away.
Wesleyan U Admissions Goes Paperless
(U.S.): With this newly implemented paperless application system, applicants are able to submit all application materials and set up interviews online.
Western Illinois U Deploys Water Bottle Filling Stations
(U.S.): New this fall, the campus community can refill water bottles at six working stations, and by the end of the academic year, an additional 14 across campus. Since the installation of the initial stations, an estimated 77,200 16-ounce bottles have been diverted from the landfill.
Benedictine U Receives $46K for Food Composting
Made possible through a Food Scrap Composting Revitalization and Advancement Program grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the new composting project is expected to divert 105,000 pounds of waste per year. Managed by student workers, the food scrap diversion program will collect organic waste from the Lisle campus cafeteria.
Elmhurst College Receives $28K Composting Grant
Awarded by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s Food Scrap Composting Grant Program, the funding will allow the college to purchase a grinder that will help divert up to 900 gallons of compostable material and food scraps from the landfill per week.
U New Hampshire Student Turns Recycling Prgm into Nat'l Nonprofit
The launch of a new nonprofit, PLAN: The Post-Landfill Action Network, is a national expansion of the university's student-led Trash 2 Treasure program, which to date has salvaged more than 100 tons of usable materials, recycled over 2,000 electronics, and donated more than five tons of food and clothing to local shelters. Trash 2 Treasure co-founder and recent graduate Alex Fried founded PLAN to work with student groups, administrators and sustainability offices to reduce campus waste nationwide.
U Wisconsin-Oshkosh Breaks Ground on $7M Biodigester Facility
Funded by the UW Oshkosh Foundation, the new biogas production facility at the state’s largest dairy farm will be able to generate 1.4 megawatts of electricity using livestock waste to generate, capture and combust methane. The biodigester will also be used by the university's environmental science, microbiology and sociology students as an off-campus laboratory.
York U Students Divert Nearly 27K Pounds of Waste from Landfill
The FreeStuff tables set up in each undergraduate residence during April and early May, where students were able to swap unwanted items, helped saved nearly 27,000 pounds of waste from the landfill this year. At the end of the move-out period, leftover items were donated to a local charity.
Carleton College Move Out Sale Raises $30K for Local Nonprofits
Community volunteers helped keep unwanted student items out of the landfills, sorting and organizing clothing, kitchen items, mini fridges, printers, bedding, books, and mirrors for the recent "Lighten Up" sale. After raising $30,000 for local nonprofits, the remaining items were donated to the Salvation Army or sent to electronics recycling.
Babson College Launches Pilot Food Waste Diversion Program
(U.S.): The joint initiative between Facilities Management, Sustainability Office and Sodexo Campus Services is expected to divert 1-2 tons per week of food waste produced by one campus dining hall from the landfill. Food waste will now be taken to local farms to be composted into soil. The college plans to expand the initiative to collect pre-consumer scraps from kitchen work stations and eventually collect post-consumer food waste.
Boston U 'Project Robinhood' Reduces Campus e-Waste
(U.S.): Since starting the initiative in March of 2013, IT staff Aaron Freed and Benny Soto have kept 20 computers from the landfill by refurbishing them for researchers in need. Freed and Soto haul the old computers back to their workstations with a "TRecycle," a three-wheeled vehicle built out of an old bicycle, scrap lumber and a wheel from a flea market.
Lehigh U Move Out Drive Raises $16K for Community Engagement
(U.S.): Volunteers recently helped keep items left behind by students from the the landfill by sorting and pricing them for sale. The funds raised from the initiative will support after-school homework clubs that pair university students with local schoolchildren.
Florida State U Saves 29K Pounds of Unwanted Items from Landfill
The Chuck it for Charity partnership between the university's Sustainable Campus and Housing & Residence Life includes weighing, sorting and redistributing unwanted items left behind during student move-outs to local community agencies. In the five years since its inception, the program has diverted more than 50 tons from the landfill.
Portland State U Conducts Waste Audit to Boost Diversion Efforts
With the goal of providing recommendations for improving waste diversion and reduction efforts on campus, university staff sorted through 690 pounds of campus garbage to find out what portion of materials could have been diverted from the landfill through recycling and composting, or avoided altogether by using durable goods. Recommendations to lower the percentage of materials that could have been composted (35 percent) and recycled (13 percent) include increased collection and education, enhanced recycling infrastructure and signage, and replacing restroom paper towels with efficient air hand driers.
UC Santa Cruz, City Partner to Reduce Move Out Waste
The university and the City of Santa Cruz are working with local charity organizations to provide free pick-up of bulky Items, clothing, e-waste, books and furniture from off-campus student residences as they move out for the summer. The first 100 student houses to sign up receive free pizza coupons.
U Oregon, Local Schools Team Up to Reduce Move Out Waste
Area high school students received an hourly credit to "buy" any items they were interested in for helping collect and remove the items left behind as University of Oregon students recently moved out of residence halls. Items not "bought" by the high school students were donated to the Springfield Public Schools Family Resource Centers.
Hartwick College Increases Recycling Efforts
Student leaders, staff, faculty and administrators are collaborating to raise awareness and improve recycling rates on campus with projects including the installation of clear, consistent recycling labeling; the addition of new recycling bins throughout campus; and Zero-Sort Recycling program outreach.
U California Santa Cruz Dorms Go Paper Towel-Free
In support of zero waste goals for 2020, paper towels will no longer be provided for drying hands in shared residential restrooms on campus. Thirty-four percent of the waste coming out of the residence halls is paper towels. Students will be asked to bring a supply of reusable cloth hand towels to school with them in the fall.
Vassar College Students Keep Unwanted Items from Landfill
Hundreds of pounds of clothing, appliances and other household items left behind as students recently moved out of the dorms were collected, sorted and donated to local nonprofit agencies by the college's SWAPR (Students With a Purpose Recycling) team. Before SWAPR started 13 years ago, the college would deploy 20 extra dumpsters outside the dorms to handle the flood of discarded material at the end of every school year. This year, says a Vassar College Committee on Sustainability intern, they only needed three to four.
