RecycleMania has STLCC-Meramec’s sustainability committee calculating the amount of trash the school and STLCC as a whole generates each week.
Kurt Oberreither
-News Editor-
RecycleMania has STLCC-Meramec’s sustainability committee calculating the amount of trash the school and STLCC as a whole generates each week.
RecycleMania is a national challenge to increase awareness and decrease waste at colleges and universities. STLCC has been participating in the eight-week-long challenge to reduce the amount, in weight, of trash.
Meramec is in the benchmark division, which means the campus is not competing with other colleges and universities, but challenging itself to be more sustainable.
Each week the trash service haulers at each campus weigh paper, bottles, cans and compost. Compost is only collected in the food service areas.
So far, the campus has collected 33,158 pounds of recyclable materials. In six weeks, Meramec has reduced its green house gases by 26 metric tons – that is 14 cars off of the road or the energy consumption of seven households.
On Wednesday, March 21, members of the sustainability committee and volunteers removed all of the waste from the Business and Administration building and brought it to the Student Center Quad. The recyclables and trash were counted in front of students.
Meramec Sustainability Coordinator Emily Neal said the focus is to get people to reuse.
“We’re trying to reduce all of our waste,” Neal said. “We want to see less recycling and waste. We want people to reuse.
Saturday, March 31 from 8:30-2.p.m. in Parking Lot A, Meramec and Midwest Recycling Centre are hosting a free electronics recycling drive.
