RecycleMania promotes a greener Pitt

Zach Grewe turned the corner near Holland Hall and met a parking lot filled with garbage as he headed toward Litchfield Towers through the Schenley Quad Wednesday afternoon.

“I thought someone was making a mess, and then I gathered that it was some sort of recycling project,” Grewe, a freshman psychology major, said.

From noon to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Free the Planet, a Pitt-based student environmental organization, hosted its annual waste audit in the Schenley Quad. Members of the group collected trash bags from a number of receptacles on campus. They then laid a tarp in the parking lot by Litchfield Towers and dumped the bags’ contents.

Free the Planet members slipped on hazmat suits and sifted through the assortment of Starbucks cups and cardboard to-go containers in search of items that could potentially be recycled or composted. 

After they collected and sorted through the waste, Sage Lincoln, the waste audit project organizer , calculated the waste breakdown. The results revealed that 34 percent of the trash was compostable, 25 percent consisted of recyclable paper and bottles and 41 percent belonged as trash. 

Lincoln, a sophomore environmental geology, urban studies and ecology major, hoped the waste audit would engage students and inspire awareness. 

“It’s a great visual representation of the problem. … It’s a very direct and disgusting way to see what impact you’re having and how bad we are at recycling,” Lincoln said.

The results from last year’s audit support her stance. 

According to Ken Arble, who participated in the waste audit last year and is currently co-president of Free the Planet, less than half of the bags collected contained “true trash,” or garbage that cannot be recycled or composted.

“There was a potential for 60 percent [of the trash] to be recycled or composted,” Arble, a senior environmental studies major, said.

The statistic shocked Shea McMurtry, a freshman pre-rehabilitation science major. 

“It’s kind of surprising that only 40 percent of it was real trash from last year,” McMurtry said.

The waste audit is the first of four events hosted by Free the Planet this week to kick off Pitt’s participation in RecycleMania, a nationwide tournament that evaluates schools during an eight-week effort to monitor and promote recycling. Schools are ranked according to categories including recycling rates per capita, the percentage recycled based on total amount of waste and universities that produce the least amount of waste, in general. 

According to Laura Zullo, Pitt’s senior manager of energy initiatives in the Office of Facilities Management, Pitt recycled 812,280 pounds of materials last year — accounting for about 20 pounds per person. The University ranked third overall among all Big East schools and ranked 33rd out of the 269 schools in the country that participated in RecycleMania.

In the “gorilla” category, which measures total weight of recycled materials, Pitt ranked second in the Big East and 11th out of the 357 total schools that participated. Pitt won first in the Big East for amount of paper recycled and placed 18th out of the 158 schools that participated. Pitt also ranked first in the Big East for the amount of cardboard recycled and 27th out of 156 schools that participated. 

Zullo said the University’s custodial services take measurements for the competition. 

 Other activities include a screening of “Trashed,” an environmental documentary, on Thursday at 9 p.m. in Dining Room A of the William Pitt Union as well as a tour of Recycle America, a plant that processes all of Pitt’s recycling, on Neville Island on Friday at 12:30 p.m. 

A number of students feel it is important to recycle on campus. 

Sarah Stein, a freshman pre-rehabilitation science major, said Pitt provides students with ample opportunity to recycle. 

“I just don’t think that people take advantage of it,” she said.

 Other students feel the school’s recycling efforts could still use improvement.

Hae Min Song, a freshman biology major, observed that there were no recycling receptacles in the quad. 

“I just wish people would be more mindful about what they throw away if there were bins available,” Song said.