Becoming a Waste-Free Campus
The topic of climate change has become more serious in the past five years. While some still deny the idea of global warming, it’s hard to ignore the amount of waste people — especially first world countries — produce. Plastic fills the oceans, beaches are lined with trash, and in the United States, it is estimated that 30 to 40 percent of food is food waste. In 2010, on both a retail and a consumer level, roughly 133 billion pounds of food ($161 billion worth) was tossed in the trash.
According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, there are 17 areas we must focus on to become a sustainable planet. These include:
No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace justice and strong institutions, and partnerships for the goals
It is within everybody’s best interest to strive to meet all of the goals.
It’s not easy to become waste-free — especially on a large college campus scale — but Southern Oregon University is trying to reach that goal. Going waste-free can not happen overnight, and it also can not happen without the help of individuals doing their part. This can include, but is not limited to, using personal reusable bags when shopping, switching to bamboo toothbrushes over plastic, or buying shampoo and conditioner bars instead of liquid in large plastic bottles. Thankfully, the people of Ashland, Oregon — and most of Oregon for that matter — are largely environmentally conscious. It’s hard to see anybody in class without a reusable water bottle or choosing to walk, bike, or take a bus downtown over driving.
It’s not only the students that help make our campus waste-free, but the wonderful incentives set in place by the school itself.
RECYCLING
The most common form of becoming waste-free is to recycle. Recycling takes what would be waste product and turns it into new product which saves material and decreases greenhouse gas emissions. Many materials can be recycled such as glass, plastic (though plastics must be of a certain grade to be recycled), tires, batteries, paper, and metal are just some of them.
Southern Oregon University achieves this goal quite easily. With nearly each trash can, there is an accompanying recycle bin. Inside each dorm room there are color-coded bins for waste, a standard black bin for trash, a red bin for cleaned, glass products, and a blue bin for any other form of recyclable product. The trash rooms in the dorms are set with larger, marked bins to indicate where to dump each of these when need be. This same colored-bin system is most everywhere on campus as well.
Bags and Straws
In an act named the Sustainable Shopping Initiative — beginning Jan. 1, 2020 — Oregon set in place a ban on single-use plastic bags. Stores and restaurants are now no longer permitted to give customers these bags, and retailers must charge five-cents for paper, reusable plastic, and fabric bags. Southern Oregon University was already taking part in this initiative as the city of Ashland was the fourth city in the state of Oregon to instate the ban of single-use plastic bags back in 2014.
Back in 2018, there was a large out-cry from internet users to stop using plastic straws. This sprouted from a statistic released by the University of California, Santa Cruz, that 91 percent of plastic isn’t recycled — instead ends up in our landfills and oceans. Seattle became the first city to put a ban on plastic straws, followed by companies such as Starbucks, McDonalds, and even Disney Parks beginning to phase out the usage of them. Instead, the use of “sippable” lids and reusable straws is now expected from many urban areas. At Southern Oregon University, these reusable straws are sold in the bookstore, and anywhere you go in Ashland, you have to request a plastic straw if you need it.
Water Fountains
As part of the effort to reduce single-use plastics in the form of plastic water bottles, new water bottle filling stations have been slowly making their way into the world. These stations are either stand alone with the only purpose to be filling up water bottles, or connected to the back of traditional water fountains. These stations fill the halls of SOU and not only help students stay hydrated without buying new bottles of water, but keep them germ free — as the water flow triggers with a sensor instead of a handle that needs to be pushed.
What Could Be Done Better?
While researching Southern Oregon University’s efforts to becoming waste-free I stumbled upon an initiative proposed by CarlyJade Norton and Chanelle Jennings for their capstone project to push the University to truly zero-waste. In this proposal, they brought up the issue of cigarette waste and mention that cigarette butts make up the most common form of litter in the United States. Norton and Jennings believe that it would be useful to the campus climate to start recycling cigarette waste through a company called Terracycle. “Terracycle takes the cigarette butts, inner foil, outer wrapping, unused tobacco, ashes and other elements that comprise of cigarette waste. Once collected, the items are separated and based on the composition those items either become melted and turned into designated hard plastics, such as ash trays and plastic pallets, or composted.”
In a recent campus climate survey pushed to students this past term, a question came up regarding the concept of composting. Composting is simply taking what would be food waste and letting it decay together to become a rich fertilizer. Not only does this cut the food waste and save money on gardening supplies, but it also helps cut greenhouse gas emissions as less waste is created overall. This could benefit our campus in great ways and would simply require specific bins for food that would be thrown out to go.
