On April 22, Facilities Management Services (FMS) conducted their annual waste audit on the Quarter Mile, opposite the Eastman Kodak Quad.

“The goals of this year’s waste audit were two-fold,” said FMS Recycling Coordinator, first year student Tyler Stewart. “First, we were looking to see how contaminated the waste was in terms of recyclables that could have been thrown out. Second, we wanted to get students active and aware about how much they were throwing out. We did this by piling the trash thrown out on the Quarter Mile and by recruiting volunteers. I was actually surprised by the significant response we got from student volunteers.”

The waste audit took bags of garbage from cans in a sample of the academic buildings and examined the contents, determining what was thrown out and what could have been recycled. The data was then recorded by weight and averaged.

The results of this year’s audit were worse than last year’s. Not only is more trash being thrown out, more recyclables are also being put into the trash instead of recycled.

“The results of the audit show much room for improvement on campus. Still, for a grass-roots program, we think overall RIT is doing very well,” said Stewart. 35% of RIT’s total waste is being recycled. Stewart indicated that RIT’s goal for the future is to increase this recycling rate to 50%.

“The audit gave us data that told us a number of things. Based on the amount of paper being thrown out, it’s clear to us that we need to do more educating students regarding what paper can be recycled. The number of bottles being thrown out indicate that more recycling bins at more locations need to be made available. Everyone knows you can recycle a bottle. In the future, we’d like to have just as many recycling bins on campus as we have garbage cans,” said Stewart.

On average, 46% of the contents of each garbage can was made up of material that could have been recycled. The waste audit was a joint effort between FMS, the Student Environmental Action League (SEAL), and Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW).