WATCH (above): A one-day, slightly messy project by students at Capilano University aims to shed a light on what we needlessly throw away. Kylie Stanton reports.
While we, as a society, have come a long way keeping recyclables out of landfills, there’s still little doubt that we could do more. That fact is even more obvious in a messy one- day experiment by 150 students at Capilano University, who signed up for their annual waste audit.
One group of students unloads the garbage bags and another group is responsible for sorting the waste material into organics, plastics and paper.
“What they’re checking for is to see whether or not the weigh stream is compliant, so if it’s landfill is all the right stuff in there,” says Susan Doig, Director of Facilities.
“It gives us an opportunity to see where we’ve come to where we’ve been.”
For more than four years, the university has been working to change the way it deals with its waste by setting up centres on every floor of every building in an effort to separate out all organic material.
But it’s not a perfect system, yet. Some of the student volunteers said, people throw out a lot of food that’s perfectly good.
In the first audit in 2011, the university found that 69 per cent of the waste collected was organic material and that number dropped to 44 per cent last year. This year’s goal is 25 per cent but for Doig that’s not going far enough.
“Zero waste,” Doig says. “We believe we can get to zero waste.”
That goal means getting everyone involved. As the teams sort garbage another 250 students are working on projects associated with the audit.
Once the unloading, emptying and sorting is through, the students will only be left with the impact of what they have seen; which, as says Cheryl Schreader from the department of geography says, tends to be more of a transformative experience.
~ with files from Kylie Stanton
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