Environmental Service Club and Environmental Action Group joined together to conduct a rescheduled waste audit on Thursday, April 14, to determine how much was being used in certain academic buildings on campus.
Originally scheduled for April 6, it was rescheduled due to the weather.
The two groups wore Hazmat suits and took trash from the Business Administration, Eppler, Hayes and Olscamp buildings, dumped the trash onto a tarp near the Union Oval and sorted through it.
They separated the trash between multiple categories: cans, plastic bottles, disposable cups, paper, glass bottles, bathroom trash, compost, cardboard, plastic bags and general plastic. Five of these categories (cans, plastic bottles, disposable cups, glass bottles and plastic bags) are recyclable materials.
The groups were out in the Oval all day Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. counting the waste they were obtaining from the buildings, and monitoring their count on a white board that was displayed outside of the garbage zone and was frequently updated throughout the day so students walking through during class change would be able to see the growing numbers and the progress throughout the day.
The waste audit, originally scheduled for April 6, is meant to see what people are throwing away that could potentially go to other forms of waste disposal such as recycling and composting.
According to Environmental Service Club president, Lily Murnen, the Union throws out between six to seven tons of trash weekly, which converted is 12,000 to 14,000 pounds.
“But purely looking at pounds trash (428 pounds in total), 45 percent of the waste stream was recyclable or could have been prevented by personal lifestyle decisions or a revised campus policy,” Murnen stated in an email. “Pounds, however, are deceiving and not all types of waste weigh the same amount per item … We audited categories that could be easily counted, we made sure to count them individually along with the weight.”
Of all the categories, bathroom trash had 46 pounds of waste, the most of all the categories. The least pounds of waste was general plastic.
Compost, which is a decayed mix of organic matter (such as fruits, vegetables, grass and leaves), accounted for almost five percent of the audit’s waste.
“If BGSU invested in composting, we would be able to reduce this number drastically.”
While the University does not have a composting program or policy in place, Environmental Action Group has put in another policy that has helped reduce waste in the Student Union.
“There is a policy that (we) put into place at the beginning of the semester,” President Matthew Cunningham said. “Cashiers no longer ask if you would like a bag. It’s a simple policy … Just that policy alone has reduced bag consumption on campus by 18,750 in the past two months.”
But Cunningham knows that this policy isn’t the end of his work in the environmental groups.
“We still have a lot of work to go,” he said. “We’re still using almost 2,000 bags every single day on campus.”
Murnen thanked everyone who participated in the audit and helped engage people during the event.
“We hope that you will continue to think about what you buy and throw away and that you will use your voice to push for sustainable reform here on campus.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct the number for bag consumption reduced from 750 to 18,750.
