Trash audit highlights Waste Week

Students wandering through the Schenley Quad Tuesday between noon and 2 p.m. may have noticed a scene a bit out of the ordinary — a group of people dressed in large white hazmat suits emptying decaying trash onto a blue tarpaulin.

Three students, members of some of Pitt’s environmental advocacy student groups, donned the protective outfits and sorted trash from general, unsorted trash cans collected from various campus buildings including David Lawrence Hall, Litchfield Towers and Posvar Hall. Each piece of trash was sorted into one of four piles — paper, plastic bottles, compostables and trash that should be in a landfill — as a public spectacle in honor of Waste Week.

Waste Week, a University-wide initiative, kicks off the awareness effort for RecycleMania, an eight-week event that advocates waste-reduction activities on college campuses. RecycleMania asks participating colleges in the U.S. and Canada to report monthly levels of trash and recycling before ranking the participants based on which schools recycle the most on a per-capita basis, have the best rates of recycling relative to their total waste and have the smallest amount of trash and recycling combined.

Efforts to reduce waste include putting recyclable pieces of trash in corresponding recycling bins, bringing plastic bags to the supermarket to transport food home and even something as simple as using a reusable coffee mug.

The final activity for Waste Week, which takes place on Friday, will be a recycled art and fashion show in Nordy’s Place from 9 p.m. until midnight. The event will feature live music, FeelGood grilled cheese sandwiches and a raffle.

Pitt has been participating in RecycleMania for five years. Mary Carenbauer, the student sustainability coordinator for the Department of Housing, noted in an email that last year Pitt ranked third out of nine competing Big East schools. This year, she said, the goal is to finish first in the conference.

This means that the Pitt student body is aiming to recycle 12 pounds per student over the course of the event in the form of cans, bottles, paper and corrugated cardboard.

RecycleMania continues through March 31, at which point Pitt’s progress will be judged against that of schools such as West Virginia University, Syracuse University, Villanova University and the University of Notre Dame, among others.

Until then, organizers hope students are making an extra effort to reduce waste by “doing things that are more than just convenient,” said freshman environmental geology major Sage Lincoln, one of the hazmat-wearing trash sorters.

Senior environmental studies major Anna Coleman, who handed out pamphlets and stickers at the event, said that publicly separating the trash into piles educated students on the recyclability of items. Considering that all the trash was mixed together and not already separated into one of the four categories, Coleman noted that the demonstration showed students “how much could have been recycled instead of going to a landfill.”

Carenbauer agreed with Coleman that the event would make the recyclable-versus-trash distinction clearer and possibly foster future prevention.

“I’m hoping this develops a more sustainable conscience among the student body,” Carenbauer said.

Senior Brenna Sweetman, student sustainability coordinator for Sodexo Dining Corporation, co-president of Free the Planet and one of the hazmat-suit-wearing trash sifters, said that the initiative was “trying to raise awareness of students wasting less and living more sustainably.”

Students appeared to take notice.

Freshman Megan MacGillivray said she stopped on her walk back to her Litchfield Towers residence hall because “you don’t see people digging through trash every day.”

Ryan Jansson, an undecided freshman, mirrored MacGillivray’s surprise at the sight.

“I thought they were digging for treasure on the blacktop,” Jansson said.

The relative absurdity and oddity of the sight for students did manage to get them to stop and listen to what Waste Week advocates were saying.

Freshman Caitlin Shoemaker said the event was eye-opening for her.

“[The event was] something out of the ordinary,” Shoemaker said. “I really didn’t think about throwing things away [in the correct place], but there are a lot of things that can be recycled.”