WASTE REDUCTION
- The largest waste initiative that has come out of Wellesley College in
2012 is organic food composting on campus. As the Office of Sustainability
and AVI worked together in fall 2012, Bates became the first dining location
to compost pre-consumer food waste in the kitchen. We partnered with a waste
hauler, EOMS Recycling, that picks up the waste during the week and sends it
to We Care, a commercial composting facility in Marlborough. The success of
this pilot program has sparked the motivation to implement pre-consumer food
composting in all of the dining locations on campus during the spring 2013
semester. It is our hope that once pre-consumer is successful in every
location, Wellesley will begin to compost post-consumer waste as well.
This has already diverted so much waste from the landfill, and will
continue to do so as the program expands. The Massachusetts Department of
Environmental Protection has mandated that institutions in the state
compost their food waste by June of 2014. This bill will encourage
colleges and universities in the area to begin diverting their organics
from the landfill towards more sustainable methods. The Office of
Sustainability already began a composting program at campus wide events
in 2010 due to a student class project and had a strong partnership
with AVI because of it, so implementing pre-consumer collection at Bates
was a smooth and efficient operation.
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In 2012, the College recycled 354,660 pounds of materials, including
co-mingled, paper, cardboard, metals, white goods, Styrofoam and
electronic waste. In 2011, the college recycled 385,800 pounds of
materials. While we recycled less for this year than the previous
year, this can also mean decreased consumption overall, which is a
positive change on campus. Recycling is important, but less waste in
general is even more imperative. Also, being one of the only colleges
in the country that recycles Styrofoam due to a class project in 2010,
Wellesley recycled over 1000 pounds in 2012.
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During the third year of Wellesley’s post-consumer waste-composting
program for special events, 700 pounds of food waste and other organic
materials were composted at the 2012 Tanner Conference and sent to We
Care, a composting facility in Marlborough, Massachusetts. We will
continue to run this program, and it will become even more of a
standard once we commit to organics composting throughout the entire campus.
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Wellesley participated in Recyclemania at the beginning of 2012, which
challenges the College to decrease the amount of waste coming from campus.
This national competition compares recycling statistics from over 600
participating colleges over an eight-week period. 2012 was our second
year in a row that we challenged Smith College and won! We hope to
recycle even more in 2013.