Human Practices Connections

We met with Peter Varney and Sydney Trimble who work with Facilities & Services (F&S) to manage the majority of waste collection bins on campus. It was important to us to connect with and gain understanding of the work that is being done to manage waste and recycling efforts within our own university community, especially the main problems faced in waste management. We learned that the main problems experienced by F&S revolve around the work of sorting waste from recyclables. Some buildings on campus have dedicated recycling containers, but not all, so F&S is strategic about the placement location of new bins that are put on campus. By increasing the accessibility of dedicated recycling containers, F&S helps ensure that less sorting work needs to be done further down the line, though people still sometimes sort their waste into the wrong section of the bin. We learned that on campus, cardboard and paper is the overwhelming majority of waste by volume, and that there is a semi load of cardboard and paper per week. Plastic actually has much less waste by volume in comparison, at around 1 to 2 semi loads per year. Pete also noted that the University only collects #1 and #2 bottled plastics, and that there are limits to how much can be collected.

Integrated Human Practices

Our human practices connections greatly impacted our project. Special thanks to Sydney Trimble and Shawn Patterson for meeting with us to help us learn more about recycling efforts on campus and also for giving us a tour of the Waste Transfer station, the collection point for all waste on campus. The University of Illinois recycles more than 4 million pounds of materials annually from our campus, with 50,000 pounds of garbage leaving the Waste Transfer station daily. We were able to view their process of collecting and sorting waste, from beginning of unloading to the end of loading onto trucks for transportation to landfills and recycling companies, which helped us to better understand what the current standard of recycling is within our community. Shawn emphasized that each step of the way, F&S prioritizes recycling as much waste as possible while ensuring that the process is efficient and safe. Going on this tour was truly a powerful experience. It was very impactful to see the amount of waste that is coming from campus buildings alone and to visualize the laborious process that F&S conducts in order to prioritize environmentally conscious efforts. It was shocking to understand that much of this work could go so much more smoothly if everyone on campus simply took the extra moment to sort waste properly when throwing it away, such as throwing recyclables in the proper bin rather than the trash. Down the line, this creates more work for F&S to hand sort these recyclables from waste. We were inspired to optimize these processes, to ensure the least amount of waste possible and to make the jobs of facilities and services workers easier since they selflessly devote their time to keeping our school clean. We can envision that a solution like apPETite, if scaled up, can support processes in place for greater recycling sustainability.

At the end of the tour, our iGEM members signed the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) pledge. iCAP has a Zero Waste movement in place, which is working towards maximizing recycling efforts while minimizing waste and consumption. The iCAP group also works with campus purchasing entities to promote avoiding purchasing of environmentally irresponsible products. By signing the iCAP pledge, we committed to remembering the knowledge we learned on the Waste Transfer tour and making actionable changes to keep our campus green, such as always putting recyclables in the proper bins! In this small way, we were able to actionably contribute to the iCAP goal of achieving 10,000 pledges by 2024.