As a leading college in the WORLD, we watch the example set by Harvard. Thus, I wanted to share the following article about Harvard’s recycling effort. Impressively, they recycle or resuse 50% of their waste, but they are setting goals to go higher.
Harvard Gazette: No time to waste
Harvard recycles, reuses, or composts more than half its waste, but there is room to further reduce the more than 6,300 tons the University sends to landfills each year, according to a recent audit.
Rob Gogan, associate manager of recycling services in Harvard’s University Operations Services, presented a snapshot of the University’s progress on Thursday at the Geological Lecture Hall. The lecture was the latest in the “Trash Talk” series sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
For each member of the Harvard community, the University generated 307 pounds of trash and recycled, reused, or otherwise removed from the waste stream another 379 pounds in 2011. Of Harvard’s 14,078 tons of refuse, 25 percent was recycled in 2011, 23 percent was composted, 8 percent was reused or otherwise diverted from the waste stream, and 45 percent was disposed of, most in a landfill in New Hampshire.
Harvard has made significant strides in reducing its waste in the past decade. In 2002, the record recycling rate for any month that year was just 34 percent. The University topped 50 percent in a month for the first time in October 2007. Today, Harvard’s recycling and reuse rate stands at about 55 percent annually. A recent audit, however, shows that there’s considerable room for improvement, which will be necessary if the University is to achieve its goal of zero waste by 2020. (Read the rest of the article here: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/01/no-time-to-waste/)