Tag Archives: Recycling

Reduce First, then Reuse, and Finally Recycle

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by McKenzie Beverage

Consume lessThere is a lot of talk about recycling in Indianapolis right now. I have a love/hate relationship with recycling. While I love the fact that recycling keeps items out of a landfill (or incinerator in our case), I hate that it has the potential to help drive consumption of one-time-use products.

A friend of mine recently moved to Switzerland. When she first arrived she was provided with her city’s official recycling guide.* Here is a translated excerpt:

Cans of Food: Try to buy seasonal fruits and vegetables instead.

Household appliances: Before throwing it away: is that necessary?

Cars: Are you sure that your old car is no longer serviceable? Or do you just want a new model?

Paper towels: Often overused–try returning to the good old-fashioned dishcloth.

Disposable diapers: Here is another case where avoiding the use of something is better than disposing of it.  The routine use of disposable diapers on most babies today is one of the major causes of the growing refuse problem. Cloth diapers, while intensive in terms of human energy, are still cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Copying: Copy machines are paper eaters!  Do you really need a copy?

It is interesting to note that the guide had almost NO information on how to actually recycle. In a country that has one of the most exhaustive and comprehensive list of requirements for dog ownership, you would think that they would be more explicit about how to actually recycle.

The emphasis on using less seems like it does make an impact though. For example, Switzerland disposed of roughly 5.5 million tons of waste and recyclables in 2009. New York (a city of with a comparable population) disposed of 14 million tons. I realize this isn’t a completely fair comparison. New York is a densely populated city, Switzerland is a small country, and well, it’s Europe. But it’s difficult not to think that a single municipality would have an easier time with waste management and education than an entire country.

Even Switzerland’s recycling rate is higher. Their rates exceed 50 percent, while New York doesn’t even reach 20 percent. Nationally, the U.S. can only claim 34 percent, and Indianapolis is barely maintaining a 10 percent rate. So what’s the catch? Is “reduce and reuse” an ethos that is just embedded into Swiss culture? Feiock and Kalan would argue that higher recycling and lower trash rates in Switzerland are a result of the country’s higher income and education levels, not program design and environmentalism. Semenza et al would not disagree, but they would add that income and education differences are not an impediment to change with the appropriate policies in place and effective leadership.

Regardless, both Switzerland and New York (and the U.S. for that matter) still produce waste at a rate that is 32 times higher than developing countries. We live in an era of (perceived) plenty. We are a consumptive culture with a trash problem. As much as I love recycling, talking about recycling, advocating for recycling, I wish we didn’t have to recycle at all. I know that recycling is an industry and that industry creates jobs, and all of that contributes to our economy. I just wish it didn’t result in things like this. And I wish that our consumerism wasn’t based on a system that results in things like this.

Repeat it with me: Reduce first, then reuse, and finally recycle.

McKenzie Beverage is the sustainability coordinator for Butler University.

Year of (Less) Waste: One Semester In

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by McKenzie Beverage

Trash AuditThe “Year of Waste” is the unofficial term for my first objective at Butler: get the recycling program, behaviors, and awareness locked in, then tackle things like transportation, local food, etc. Recycling is a baseline. The program (and participant behavior) should be seamless. Once that happens, we can take the conversation to the next level. This blog entry is a reflection on the first half of the Year of Waste.

[Reduce]
Trash audit results are in. People at Butler are putting 33% of their recyclables in the trash. Students from my class (and a couple of daring volunteers), helped us sort through the 1,800 pounds of trash strewn across Butler’s west mall during Earth Week. Reporters from many of the local news channels and the Indianapolis Star also joined us.

Are you as excited as I was to know what is being thrown away? There were some things that surprised me—two bags full of clothes in perfect condition, a case of unopened Ramen, and an unopened box of windshield wiper blades.

There were many things that didn’t surprise me: plastic water bottles, fast food containers, LOTS of pizza boxes, beer cans, Starbucks cups, and uneaten (but cooked) food leftover from the dining halls. Food waste itself accounted for one-third of the total. Read Shel Silverstein’s poem “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout” and you’ll get a good idea of what it was like to root around through one day’s worth of garbage from the dining halls.

The trash audit served two purposes: 1) raise awareness and 2) collect data. Reducing consumption is directly tied to raising awareness about our current consumption patterns. It was a newsworthy spectacle that hopefully gave some perspective on just how much we consume.

[Reuse]
When you think of Butler, what do you think of first? For some people, it’s the lovely green campus, maybe the bell tower, or the historic buildings. For most people, it’s Hinkle Fieldhouse.

On Earth Day, we announced that we are working with People for Urban Progress (PUP) to salvage fieldhouse seats to sell them to the public and install them in public places as the second round of PUPstops. This unprecedented project has already received national media attention and will hopefully inspire other university athletics departments about how to get engaged in sustainability initiatives.

[Recycle]
In addition to the trash audit, students from my class designed and implemented two-week recycling competitions for some Greek houses and graduating seniors. The students completely managed the whole process and came up with exceptionally creative ways to incentivize participation. Between the recycling competitions and the trash audit, my class helped divert over 2,500 pounds of recyclables from the incinerator. While I am thrilled that they were so successful, I am also deeply bothered by how many pounds were accumulated by so few people in such a short period of time.

I am an absolute advocate for recycling, but I truly believe that it encourages consumption. The good feeling that we get knowing that we can recycle something often blinds us from the fact that that product was still manufactured and shipped which takes an enormous amount of energy. Recycling itself uses significant amounts of energy. Advocating for reducing and reusing before recycling is difficult, especially in our one-time-use-disposable-culture.

I’ve got some big ideas for the next half of this year. I’ll check back in soon and let you know how it goes.

McKenzie Beverage is the sustainability coordinator for Butler University.

Raising Recycling Awareness at Butler

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by McKenzie Beverage

greekrecyclingPulling the top of a recycling bin off and removing the contents in the busy atrium of Gallahue Hall is not an atypical sight. Butler’s custodial crew sweeps through the building daily, transporting our refuse to places unknown by most. But pulling the top of a recycling bin off with a class gathered around to inspect the contents and removing each item piece by piece will certainly catch the eye of passers-by.

“Ew, that’s disgusting!” one of my students proclaimed at the sight of a Gatorade bottle filled with chewed sunflower seeds. “Why would someone throw a Snickers wrapper in the plastic bottle recycling bin?” asked another. “Why is there so much trash in there?”

When we arrived back in the classroom I asked them to pair up into teams and sort through items placed on two different tables. I prompted them with the question, “What is recyclable?” Some of the items included: a dry erase marker, Starbucks bag with old food inside, balloon, push pin, paper clip, iPod, battery, book, small bits of paper, Solo cup, electronics charger, CDs, etc.

One team separated the items according to what they thought was recyclable on Butler’s campus. They included the iPod along with the other non-recyclables. Roughly half of their items were deemed non-recyclable. The other team separated the items according to what they thought could be donated or reused in some way. They only had one item in their non-recyclable pile—a beat up dry erase board eraser. When asked what to do with old batteries and iPods, none of them were sure. They knew they shouldn’t throw them away, but they didn’t know where to take them.

As the first sustainability coordinator for Butler, I am tasked with answering those questions and coming up with solutions to raise awareness. My job is to bridge campus operations with academics and create learning opportunities out of our waste, our buildings, our food, our trees, etc.

My first big push as sustainability coordinator is focused on trash and recycling on campus—specifically awareness. People have very emotional responses to recycling—it’s tangible and it’s ingrained in us from a very young age. Although most people want to recycle, many of them, like my students, are unsure what and how to recycle on campus. Signage varies, bins are not uniform sizes, and bin placement is inconsistent.

After discovering trash in the recycling bins, one of my students noted that there weren’t any trash bins nearby. In fact, there weren’t any on the entire floor. This may seem like a strategy to increase recycling, however it more often increases contamination (trash in the recycling). If contamination is too high, all of the recycling will be thrown in the trash. This is one of the biggest complaints I hear at Butler and it fuels negative perceptions of the way our building services team operates.

As part of Butler Earth Week programming, a student group from my class will be performing a highly visible trash audit. The contents of a dumpster will be poured out in a well-trafficked area and an Anthropology class will assist sorting through the garbage. Students will gather data to determine the percentage of recyclables and food waste in the dumpster while simultaneously raising awareness about waste on campus and educating my students. This data will help me understand what is being pitched and inform my decision about what to target in an awareness campaign and on signage. If we see those Google glasses that Tim Carter threw away, we will be sure to reuse or recycle them.

McKenzie Beverage is the sustainability coordinator for Butler University.