First-Year student Davin Sweeney lives in a double room that has a special bin for recycling. But, like many other students, he and his roommate do not use it. “We put the trash and recycling in the same bin outside anyways, so we don’t feel the need to separate it in our room,” he says. Sweeney believes that the SLU administration does not do a great job of informing the students where to correctly dispose of their waste.
Here at SLU, it appears that we are focused on separating trash and recycling in order to be a more sustainable campus. There are separate bins designated for trash, recycling and compost around campus, giving the illusion we focus on separating our waste.
The big questions are: do students actually separate their waste, how well does SLU advocate for recycling and composting, and what happens if we do not separate waste?
Michael Guido ’22 believes it is easier for him and his roommate to each have their own trash bin to put their waste in. “It’s just easier to put all of our stuff in one bin rather than worrying about separating trash and recycling into two different ones,” states Guido. The convenience of having a bin by their bed is too great for students with roommates to want to recycle.
Composting is also something that Dining Services on campus tries to focus on. The Northstar Café has bins for trash, compost and recyclables in order to encourage students to separate their waste. Dana Dining Center also takes students’ waste from the dish belt and correctly disposes of it. The University keeps tabs on the organic waste disposed of and generated on campus and calculates a weekly diversion rate for the waste.
According to the St. Lawrence Organic Waste Collection, the weekly organic waste in tons diverted is 2.94 and the weekly organic waste in tons generated is 5.91, making the diversion rate 49.8 percent on campus. Dana collects 1.74 tons of organic waste each week and the Northstar Café collects 0.87 tons weekly.
These statistics show that students at the Northstar Café do not separate their waste as much as they should be, whereas at Dana, the Dining Services staff separate the waste themselves, so it has a higher diversion rate than the Northstar Café.
The Assistant Director of Sustainability and Energy Management at SLU is Ryan Kmetz. Kmetz believes it is important for students to think about how they can generate the least amount of waste as possible and it is easy to learn how to do this on campus. “One of the many cool things about our campus community is that we have a plethora of students, employees and alumni who are collaborating on projects and programs to help achieve a University mindset of reduce, reuse, repurpose and recycle,” Kmetz states. There are plenty of people in the SLU community that advocate for correct waste management to encourage students to do it.
Katie Parsons ’22 has just recently started recycling because, for the first half of the year, she did not realize there was a dumpster for recycling separate from the trash dumpster. “We do our best to recycle now that we know there is a dumpster outside to actually use for recycling,” Parsons says. Even though she and her roommate now separate their waste, they spent much of the year incorrectly throwing their waste away because SLU did a poor job of making sure all students knew about the recycling dumpster.
Adeline Reale ’22 recycles in her room because she does not find it inconvenient to do. “My roommate and I separate our trash and recycling because it isn’t that much of a hassle and we know that it’s the right thing to do,” says Reale. They know that not correctly disposing of their waste can have damaging effects on the environment and believe that everyone on campus should recycle and compost.
Environmental Studies Professor Jon Rosales agrees that separating waste is important for the environment. “If we do not separate trash from recyclables, they will not be recycled and just add to wasted work and energy.” Rosales added, “if we do not separate recyclables as we do in single stream recycling, for that matter, it is currently not being taken by Chinese recycling companies and is being landfilled now in the U.S.,” Rosales states.
He brings attention to the effect on U.S. landfills, and reminds the students that we really can have a huge impact on the surrounding environment with a few simple decisions.
A problem that may cause students to not dispose of their waste correctly is the lack of knowledge about the subject. Kmetz suggests that students reach out and ask questions if they want to know more and how they can make an impact. “I’d encourage students to explore the University Green Pages, participate in one of the student environmental clubs/organizations, investigate the Sustainability Program or go to a meeting of the Campus Committee on Sustainability and Climate Neutrality,” Kmetz suggests. There are simple solutions SLU provides that students can follow in order to help make this a more sustainable campus.