Digging into the Waste Audit
In late October, a dedicated group of professors and teacher
candidates joined forces with Facilities to conduct a waste audit of Lamoureux,
the Faculty of Education's main building. A waste audit may sound a bit
technical, but it's simple: we collected all the garbage, tracked where each bag
came from, and then weighed and sorted the contents. This hands-on approach
allowed us to see what people are really recycling and composting, as opposed
to what could be properly sorted and recycled.
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of our findings, let's
address why this matters. Sending compostable organics to a landfill is not
just bad for the environment; it's contributing to the climate crisis. And when
recyclable items end up in the wrong bin, it's a tremendous waste of valuable
resources in a world where resources are finite. Landfills also have social and
economic implications, often affecting marginalized communities the most.
Here's what we discovered:
Commonly mis-sorted items
- Coffee Cups: They belong in the compost.
- Plastic Bags, Ziplocs, and Wrappers: Straight to the trash, not recycling.
- Office Blue Bins: These are for paper only, so no metal, plastic, or glass items.
- Friendlier Containers: We also found a few re-usable containers in the recycling. These are worth celebrating (and earn you money) so please return them in the blue bins inside the LMX Café.
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We Should Compost More
Did you know that everything in the paper bin is also compostable? That's why we recently made a crucial change to our recycling stations. Past audits showed that dirty take-out containers and wet coffee cups were ruining the paper meant for recycling. If it's wet or used for food and made of paper, it should be composted, not recycled. In fact, about 60% of the waste we audited was compostable!
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We Need to Remove Lone Trash Bins
Several classrooms and labs had trash cans with no recycling or compost options beside them. Our office is now working with the Faculty to add options where needed or remove trash cans entirely.
Goodbye paper towels
Waste from bathrooms made up 20% of the total bags collected
and 12% of the total waste. Surprisingly, 76% of that was dried paper towel, a
very light-weight material. That’s a lot of paper towel.
If we decide to remove paper towel dispensers, leaving only hand dryers, all this waste could vanish, and we'd save trees.
Next Steps
Now it's up to the EcoClub to decide what else they want to
do with this information. Next time you are in Lamoureux, take a look and see
if you notice any campaigns to address these issues!
Do you want to improve the waste diversion in your building? If you spot a missing bin or a lone garbage can on campus, snap a photo and send it to us at sustainable@uottawa.ca or slide into our DMs on Instagram. Your observations matter!
Or join our next campus waste audit in February!
~ angela plant, residual resources coordinator