Consumption and Waste

In February, 2017, I am initiating a week long project for supporting post-consumption awareness and education, as well as increasing the percentage of waste diverted away from our landfills. Our Union Building in the center of WSU campus is one of the few buildings that doesn't have a funcitonal composting system. This is largely because of high risk of waste-stream contamination and not all vendor materials are recyclable or compostable. As of 2014, 3,099 tons of waste each year on campus gets sent to landfills. This number has the potantial to drastically decrease, and this initiative will make a large positive impact on that.ξ
What the project will consist of is having 10-20 student volunteers every day for one week to help monitor new waste systems (with landfill, recycling, and compost) and educate students on what materials of their waste is disposed of into the according waste bins. With volunteers help, the percentage of contamination is projected to decrease by 95% and waste diversion will increase by at least 85%.ξ
This project will be acting as a pilot initiative that will lead to greater campus operation changes. The project will only last one full week in order to recieved data on how successful this project is with waste diversion and contamination. It is unable to be a permanent change because the risk of contamination in all of the waste streams is too high, which would result in the project being unsuccessful. Hopefully with my initiative, we will be one big step closer to being a zero waste campus.ξ
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1500 Glenn Terrell Mall
Atlanta, GA 30314
United States

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