Auburn U Bolsters Waste Diversion Efforts with Solar
(U.S.): Solar-powered trash cans and recycling bins have recently been installed on campus that will compact trash leading to a reduction in labor, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions due to the reduced frequency with which the cans will need to be emptied.
Concordia U St.Paul Implements Single Stream Recycling
(U.S.): In an effort to reduce waste, new recycling bins are currently being installed throughout campus to allow students, faculty and staff to recycle paper, cardboard, plastic, glass bottles and aluminum in a single container.
Johnson County CC Receives Recycling Bins
(U.S.): Thanks to a grant from Keep America Beautiful and The Coca-Cola Foundation, 50 new recycling bins are being installed at the community college in advance of the upcoming semester to increase waste diversion efforts.
U North Texas Boosts Recycling Efforts
Spurring new outdoor collection bins and installation of solar trash compactors, a recent university study found that when recycling bins were readily available diversion efforts increased from 20-30 percent to 80-90 percent.
Yale U Takes New Steps to Divert Waste
In addition to mattress recycling, the university's athletics department now donates unused high jump and pole vault mats to local schools to achieve its goal of 50 percent waste diversion rate by June 2016.
U Connecticut Invests in Sports Waste Reduction Campaign
(U.S.): University of Connecticut students encourage recycling at university basketball games through the Green GameDays campaign. At halftime, volunteers reminded game patrons to recycle items such as cardboard and plastic bottles. At the end of the game a total of 1,080 bottles were collect for recycling.
U Dayton's New Recycling Agreement Includes Outreach
A recent five-year agreement with a recycling company will offer, besides recycling services, sustainability curriculum with hands-on educational experiences, programming such as facility tours, guest lectures and special projects, assistance with the university's sustainability education efforts in local schools, assistance with participation in Recyclemania, and messages at athletic events to help promote recycling and sustainability initiatives in the community.
Lehigh U Students Begin Composting
Driven environmental concerns, the new Green Resource Recovery of Waste project aims to turn all of the university’s food waste into compost that can be used to fertilize greenery and other plant beds on campus, and then grow food to serve in campus dining halls.
Partnering for End of Year Waste Diversion Campaign
Oklahoma City University, Tennessee State University, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Central Oklahoma, University of La Verne and Vanderbilt University partnered with a national organization to divert clothing, shoes and dorm room textiles from the landfill resulting in a collection of 30,000 pounds of material.
Vanderbilt U Reduces Take Out Container Waste
(U.S.): The university's Campus Dining unveiled the "If You Stay, Use a Tray" initiative using posters, social media, stickers, to-go box signs and buttons worn by Dining workers that intends to promote awareness of sustainability by encouraging people staying in the hall to eat off of plates instead of using disposable boxes.
Elon U Initiates End of Year Waste Diversion Campaign
In an effort to keep usable items out of the landfill, the "Don't Trash It!" campaign encouraged students to donate unwanted items rather than throw them away during the move-out phase. In total, the collection effort donated over 10,500 pounds of bedding, clothing and housewares and nearly 1,500 pounds of canned food.
College of Charleston Hosts Zero Waste Alumni Event
The university's Office of Alumni Relations and the Office of Sustainability partnered for the 5,000-person event making it a 94.7 percent waste diversion event, where only 413 pounds of material were sent to the landfill including gloves, plastic wrap and any non-recyclable packaging.
Menlo College Student Develops Campus Sustainability Program
A student recently initiated several waste-related projects at the college in memory of her sister, who was her university's Living Green Club president, including banning one-time use plastic bottles, refurbishing campus recycling bins, installing water bottle refill stations, and holding a sustainability fair.
U Mississippi Receives Recycling Grant
One of the state's agencies to receive a portion of $227,160, the university will increase recycling stations across campus and develop educational recycling campaigns.
Pomona College Diverts Year End Celebration Waste
(U.S.): The college's Class of 2014 Class Day celebration either composted or recycled all waste from 1500 participants and reduced bottled water by providing solar-powered water cooler drink stations.
U North Carolina Greensboro Abandons Junk Mail
(U.S.): Eliminating staff time it takes to reprogram 6,000 student post office boxes, the new dynamic mail system assigns a unique one-time postal code that corresponds with a postal cubby where packages and letters can be picked up. In this new scheme all bulk mail, fliers and junk mail are eliminated.
Richland College Repurposes Collected Plastic Bags
The college's Sustainable Conversations group, designed to brainstorm ways to reduce campus waste and productively recycle and reuse discarded materials, set up a bag collection during RecycleMania, which they are using for crochet projects.
Keene State College Averts Plastic Bottles
Fifteen buildings across campus have recently received water bottle refilling stations, which encourage the campus community to use their own bottles and will decrease the amount bottles recycled and sent to the landfill.
Mount Marty College Wins Recycling Grant
As part of a grant by Keep America Beautiful and The Coca-Cola Foundation, the college will receive 40 additional recycling containers and implement a plan focused on the act of recycling and educational outreach.
15 Schools Selected to Participate in Keep America Beautiful Prog
Keep America Beautiful's Give and Go 2014 program is a partnership with Goodwill Industries and select colleges and universities to implement effective collection drives during the spring move out period at the end of the term when students leave campus housing. Selected 2014 schools include College of Charleston; Creighton University; Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; Northern Illinois University; Pacific Lutheran University; Radford University; Southern Oregon University; Texas A&M University; Texas Tech University; The University of Toledo; Trinity University; University of Georgia;; University of Louisville; University of Missouri at Kansas City; University of San Diego; and University of St Thomas.
Loyola U Chicago Votes to End Plastic Bag Usage
Waiting to see how the administration votes on the matter, students are in favor of using compostable totes carrying a charge $0.70 per bag, which they hope will incent students to use their own reusable bags.
Over 89M Pounds of Material Diverted Through RecycleMania
The nationwide college and university competition to recycle and compost material had 461 participating universities that diverted over 89 million pounds during the eight-week period. Antioch University was awarded Grand Champion with the highest percentage of overall recycled waste (93 percent); Kalamazoo College won the Per Capita Classic with over 48 pounds of recyclables per person; and Valencia College won in the Waste Minimization category with 2.87 pounds of waste per person. Rutgers University won the Gorilla Prize, the highest gross tonnage of combined paper, cardboard and bottle and cans regardless of campus population, at 1.53 million pounds.
Western Kentucky U Composts Food Waste
Recently installed into an existing university dining hall, the new food pulper/extractor takes pre and post-consumer food waste, breaks it down into small pieces, and then the material is hauled to the university's arboretum to be mixed with wood chips to create compost.
U Texas Austin Moves to Glass Collection
After switching to single stream collection of accepted recyclable material, the university amended its contract to begin glass collection due to an increase of the material on campus.
Angelo State U Introduces New Recycling Initiatives
The university's Student Government Association partnered with other student organizations for Adopt-A-Hallway, a program designed to increase waste diversion, and new recycling-specific dumpsters have been placed across campus allowing for a more efficient diversion and pick up process.
Bridgewater College Pilots Composting Program
The college recently implemented a composting pilot program for all dining hall food waste. Two student interns are conducting outreach efforts to the campus community about the new program.
U Massachusetts Adopts Recycling at Medical School
The university's Hahnemann Campus combined multiple medical supply rooms to reduce waste from expired materials and implemented a process change that allows for the removal of "blue wrap" before surgery, which thwarts contamination, so that it may be recycled.
George Washington U to Audit Recycle Bins
Attempting to bolsters its efforts to reduce waste by 50 percent over the next three years, the university's Sustainability Office will sift through select recycling bins across campus to identify commonly tossed items that cause contamination of the recyclables.
Portland State U Institutionalizes Composting
After a 2013 campus waste audit revealed that 36 percent of the material sent to the landfill could be composted, the university recently signed a new custodial contract that allows the campus community access to food scrap collection bins in departmental common areas.
Princeton U to Adopt Single-Stream Recycling
After a single-stream pilot study revealed a significant increase in recycling rates, the university recently made the decision to convert campus to the new method by the end of 2014.
U Toronto Begins Campaign to Eliminate Styrofoam
The university's Sustainability commission has recently been handing out free reusable containers, along with posting fliers, that attempt to reduce the amount of styrofoam containers coming from on-campus food trucks.
North Carolina State U Begins Pizza Box Composting
The university's Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling implemented the Pizza Box Composting Project, which seeks to decrease compostable waste on campus and encourage students to pay more attention to the importance of composting.
U Colorado Boulder Partners on Zero Waste Sports Practices
Sustainable Gamedays, sponsored by BASF, is a series of eight men and women's basketball games in which videos featuring facts about sustainability and organics recycling show on the arena screens, and demonstrates to game-goers how to use the many zero waste stations placed around the arena for recycling and composting.
Georgetown U Distributes Recycling Bins in Dorms
(United States): As part of a marketing effort to increase student engagement, the Office of Sustainability has distributed recycling bins and educational fliers to all on-campus residents in dorms.
PepsiCo Spring Recycling Challenge Announces Results
(United States): PepsiCo's Dream Machine Recycling Initiative encourages participating colleges and universities to increase recycling rates by using its kiosk to collect plastic and aluminum beverage bottles and cans. The top five schools collecting the highest average amount of containers per kiosk are Mountwest College, Joliet Junior College, Rider University, University of Pittsburgh and Florida International University.
U Florida Student Spearheads Composting
(United States): A student in the university's College of Design, Construction and Planning has started a 10-bin collection system in an effort to promote the activities of the Student Compost Cooperative whose long-term goal is to establish compost collection bins across campus.
Earlham College Opens Free Store
Attempting to divert waste throughout the year from the landfill, a permanent collection bin holds the unwanted items until they are taken to the store where the campus community can pick things up for free.
