There are two main components to residence hall recycling education: information (the what, when and where) and promotions (the why). I have written other posts about the informational facet, including location, images, and even using things like QR codes to convey information. And I have written previously about the why.
Rather than just looking for outside funding sources, have you looked to see whether there are ways to enhance the revenues that you receive for your recyclables to get you the extra funding that you need? What items on your wish list could you fund if you took advantage of those opportunities?
One often overlooked opportunity is collection efficiency. Recycling does not increase the total amount of waste that you generate. Recycling takes a portion of that waste and diverts it out of the trash into another container or containers. As a result, the more you recycle, the fewer the amount of labor and financial resources you should have to dedicate to trash collection.
Now that summer attendance has dropped, do you still need the same level of trash and recycling pickup that you had in July? Have you met with your waste hauler? Do you have a plan with your waste hauler and recycling service provider to scale back on the frequency of pickup and/or size of your containers during the off season? Have you identified when the start of next season is and when you will need additional pickups again?
For part 3 of this “Know Your Campus” series, I am going to focus on location. Some folks in real estate are fond of suggesting that location is everything. I wouldn’t go that far, but location can have a profound impact on how you manage your recycling and sustainability programs. In terms of location, I would suggest there are 3 main categories of schools: Urban campuses, Semi-urban/suburban campuses, Rural campuses
For this part 2, I am focusing on some of the differences between public and private schools. Every school has a complicated mix of funding sources, a lot of which I am going to gloss over (consider this the intro 100-level version). For those of you who are recent students making the transition to coordinator or who are folks new to working with schools, I am hoping this overview helps.
When you set up a recycling program, one struggle that you often encounter is that some people think they already know everything about recycling.
“I can’t believe what those kids leave behind.” If you do enough end-of-the-year student move outs, you hear that statement a lot. If you’re making that statement to note the number of opportunities that there are to recover valuable materials, and how much of a shame it is to see that stuff end up in a landfill, then we’re on the same page.
There are over 1,500 4-year colleges and universities across the U.S. and almost all of them have some portion of their enrollment that lives on campus and has to move out at the end of the year. When those students move out, there is a huge surge of trash that goes along with it. At more residential schools, it is not uncommon to see trash totals nearly double the month that students move out.
Every campus is a little bit different. Ironically, if you break a campus down into individual parts (e.g. traditional dormitory-style residence halls, apartment/suite style residence halls, faculty offices, departmental offices, cash-operations dining, dining commons, etc.), each individual part is actually pretty darn similar. But what makes each campus completely unique is the combination of parts, scale of the parts, the overall academic philosophy, and the fundamental business model of the campus. For the next few blog posts, I am planning to focus on some of the biggest differences and some fundamental changes those differences bring.
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