Sustainability Week occurred a couple weeks ago, and among the many events throughout the week was a waste audit.  During the waste audit, trash was collected from various locations across campus, such as behind the library. After the collected trash was delivered, interns from the Office of Sustainability and member of Alliance for Planet Earth opened the bags and sorted the trash into different categories.  Among these were compost, recycling, trash, and specialty items used for art pieces commissioned for Sustainability Week. The recycling was further divided into Terracycle and number ones, twos, and fives because the Office has specialty recycling that the general campus does not. Terracycle, for example, recycles items like pens, empty shampoo bottles, cleaned out toothpaste containers, and more.  While plastic items with a number one or two on the bottom of the item can be recycled on campus, number fives can only be recycled through the Office, and these are items like plastic Starbucks cups. Straws, paper Starbucks cups, and plastic bottles were kept separate for different counting purposes and for art pieces.

The intent of the waste audit was to raise awareness on the habits of the College of Charleston community while diverting items from the landfill.  Volunteers sorted trash all day, but I only had the opportunity to sort for an hour before class. Even during that hour, however, I helped dig through multiple bags of trash, and I saw how much waste was simply thrown in the trash can.  Much of the trash consisted of food waste, single-use plastic items, and products that can be composted but were placed in the trash bin instead.

Sorting through the trash was very frustrating because it is difficult to imagine how students do not care about where they throw their trash when items could be composted or recycled.  Whether it is an issue of students not caring, not being educated, or a combination of the two, the resources are available to students and faculty to compost food scraps or recycle plastic water bottles.  Our campus even has reusable water bottle filling stations located around campus to combat the use of single-use water bottles.

People are interested in convenience, and students at the College of Charleston are no exception.  This isn’t our fault–it is the fault of the society that raised us. American society is interested in profit, and this profit is what fuels our country’s corporations today.  As discussed in the “Story of Stuff” video, corporations operate with the goal of creating the most money, which is achieved through our linear economy and the corporate control of the government.  How it is more profitable to create excess amounts of waste baffles me, but the concept of waste was really reinforced during the waste audit.

I hope that students passing by the audit noticed the amount of waste created by the College in just a few hours, and that the audit will help raise awareness so students can change their habits.  I also hope that officials of the College noted the event to perhaps draw connections of how infrastructure can be better adapted. Installing more compost bins around campus would be a great start, as there are only a few outside of dining halls, and more signage informing students of the proper way to dispose of their waste would also be helpful.