Sustainability Blog

Monthly Theme: Recycling

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Every month we try to focus on a new area of sustainability on campus. As RecycleMania continues, this monthly theme will be about recycling! In this blog you’ll find some facts about recycling as well as some tips and tricks to get the most out of your recycling experience.

Why Recycle?

  • Conserves natural resources and energy
  • Reduces amount of waste being sent to landfills
  • Helps create jobs in the recycling and manufacturing industries
  • Prevents pollution
  • Increases economic security

Did you know…

  • Each American uses around 680 pounds of paper each year, and most people just throw it away instead of recycling it for further use
  • One glass bottle saves enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours
  • Over 25 trillion Styrofoam coffee cups are thrown away each year, just by Americans
  • Recycling one aluminum can saves the amount of energy needed to power a TV for three hours
  • Recycling a stack of newspaper just 3 feet high saves one entire tree
  • The average person generates 4.5 pounds of waste per day or 1,643 pounds per year!
  • Americans send 2.5 million plastic bottles to the landfill every hour
  • Recycling 1 million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by 3,657 U.S. homes in a year

Recycling Terminology

Commingled

We use commingled recycling bins on campus, which means you can put all recyclable materials in the same bin.

This includes:

  • Aluminum cans (don’t crush/flatten them) clean
  • balled aluminum foil/pie pans, loose metal jar lids/steel bottle caps
  • paper milk/juice cartons (do not flatten) and empty aerosol cans (no caps)

This does NOT include:

  • Glass
  • Cardboard
  • Plastic lids and caps
  • Plastic bags
  • Tissues, paper towels, or napkins

You can find a full list here!

Upcycle

It’s the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value. To put it simply, to upcycle means to creatively reuse. For example, do you have an abundance of old t-shirts? Make them into a quilt!

E-Waste

Electronic waste, or e-waste, includes technological products nearing the end of their “useful life.” This includes a lot of outdated technology, such as VCRs, computer monitors, fax machines, and more.

So what can you do to help the process?

  • Flatten all cardboard boxes
  • Empty and rinse all containers
  • Do not flatten containers/cans
  • Remove caps from plastic bottles and throw them away
  • There is no need to remove staples, paper clips, stamps, tape, or spiral binding from paper