LSC Gets Trashed

5/1/08

By Brian Wilcock, Jon Mazurek, and Dani LaPointe
Special to the Critic from SCC

Over two thirds of LSC’s waste is actually recyclable material including glass, plastic, aluminum, paper and organic material that can be composted.

The findings come from a waste audit done by Students for Campus Conservation (SCC) during Earth Week. A waste audit is an event where people sort through “trash” to see how much waste can actually be recyclable.

Things in the trash including many unopened or half finished items of food and drink, clothes in good condition, books, and others. The waste audit will hopefully get students and administration see that many of the things that are thrown away should actually go somewhere else to be recycled or used as compost.

A large percentage of the actual trash consisted of Styrofoam plates, plastic utensils, packaged food wrappers, and coffee cups. Most of these items and a majority of the organic material (food) came from the Hornet’s Nest. It would be easy to solve this problem by implementing practices such as using reusable or recyclable serving containers.

To reduce the amount of organic waste that is thrown out, the Hornet’s Nest could start a composting program like the one already in use at the Dining Hall. These two practices would greatly reduce the amount of waste on campus.
Those living and studying on campus would benefit from a more expansive and convenient recycling program. In a recent project for our Leadership Theory and Practice class, we put recycling bins in every freshman suite on campus. These were to be used when they were available and convenient.

The SCC club is currently focusing on increasing awareness and creating solutions for more sustainable waste management on campus. If anyone is interested in helping us create a more sustainable campus, they can e-mail Kurt Heinchon at kurt.heinchon@lyndonstate.edu.