With over two billion tons of municipal solid waste produced each year, it is crucial that institutions and organizations, as well as individuals, become more conscientious about the waste they produce, consume, and discard. Reasons for excessive amounts of waste include lack of knowledge, greed and selfishness, lack of concern, lack of resources and proper management systems, increase in goods production, increase in population… the list goes on. However, as we have learned, individual action leads to larger scale change, and large scale change can lead to great change.
This campaign intends to approach how waste is produced and managed on a college campus. The problem is simple: there is globally too much waste that is produced and then improperly disposed of. To review, this leads to further issues such as environment destruction and degradation, habitat alteration, increased greenhouse gas emissions, health issues, landfill overflow, excessive pollution.. Again, the list goes on. This campaign will provide guidance and resources to how individuals on a campus and the institution as a whole can attempt to reduce the amount of waste they contribute to this problem.
Essential stakeholders involved in this campaign include every member of a college campus community. This includes the students, staff, faculty, and administration. They hold importance because as active members of the community, they hold the power to make the most change. Their everyday habits, efforts, and concern towards sustainable issues are crucial to the success of a waste management plan, as well as inspiring for others. The administration is necessary as they are the higher up decision makers of the community. The various boards, deans, and other administrators are often where rules and policies of the campus get created or amended. Students, staff, and faculty are essential to approaching the administration with ideas, pushing for change, and engaging with rules that already exist. Additional stakeholders include companies or groups that colleges and universities might partner with to make their campus more sustainable.
This campaign aims to provide resources and guidance to members of a campus community about how they can produce less waste and dispose of the waste they do produce properly. A common barrier to change is that some people might not believe that individual actions make any difference, so why bother? As we know, any efforts to change are significant and can inspire greater change. Particularly on a campus, one student might inspire a group of students, who get together with faculty to bring ideas to the administration, which creates change on a campus. Moving past that, one campus could inspire another, and before you know it, colleges all over the country could be implementing that first student’s plan to make their campus greener.
Included in the resource guide is a list of tips/suggestions and websites to reference to make a college campus more efficient when it comes to waste management. The tips in the guide can be applied to all people in the community, not just students or just staff/faculty. It would be even better if we could see students, faculty, staff, and administration all coming together and collaborating to improve the campus. Considering different ideas and suggestions is essential to making progress! The resource guide provides everyday habit changes people can make, encourages people to work with people to promote new ideas, and encourages more education on the issue.
I would propose to keep data records to assess the success of waste management on a campus. Tracking how much waste the college produces and checking in on a regular basis to assess progress. To get more specific, we could track the waste that comes from each department to determine if there’s one area that needs to be improved more than another. Additional data points to be kept could be how much recyclable materials is actually disposed of in recycling bins vs how much is disposed of improperly. If a new policy is implemented, tracking waste statistics before the rule was implemented vs. after will assess the effectiveness of the policy.
Click HERE to read the resource guide
