What I Learned at Work Today

Today, a few other Dorm Crew people and I did some freelance work. In other words, we sorted through 40 bags of trash at the Business School, separating and weighing the recyclables, compostables, reusables, and actual trash (or residuals, as they are technically called) in each bag. Officially, we were auditing the B school's waste, and we got to dress up as if we were handling hazardous waste (which, in some cases...it felt like we were).

So the first thing that comes to mind is probably "that's nasty." Can't totally argue with you there--the bag full of rotting chicken parts was especially offensive. But overall it was a really good experience. It was just fun to chill with Kathryn and Jack at our incredibly efficient waste-sorting table, but it was also really interesting to see first-hand just how much we waste. On average, each bag of trash probably consisted of 10% reusables, 30% recyclables, 30% compostables, and only 30% actual trash. Multiply that 70% of could-be reused/recycled/composted material by the 40 bags we had, and then think about the fact that this is only a very small sample of all the trash generated by one program of one school over eight weeks...and that's sad.

The thing that's tough is that actually preventing all this unnecessary waste is mostly a matter of educating everyone in the US about how to recycle/compost and why it's important. The two people we were working with from the Office of Sustainability--Colleen and Marc--were explaining that at this point, people don't totally understand how to recycle (or appreciate its importance, in some cases), so composting would be a whole other animal. When I helped man the trash stations at reunion picnics during Alpo, Harvard had to hire a person to stand at each trash station and tell people what was recyclable, what was trash, and what was compostable. So that's a lot of man power over a lot of time...but the results at those picnics were pretty impressive. By the end of each night, there were about 10 bags of trash versus 80 bags of recycling and compost.

Anyway, my point is, even though I'm probably not going to join the EAC or anything, I've gained a new appreciation for the people who run and work at waste management facilities. First off, it's a big job. Second off, it's really gross sometimes (did I mention the rotting chicken meat?). So good job, people who run and work at waste management facilities.

Oh, more things I learned today--the place we did this auditing was in a giant warehouse where they keep all of the Habitat for Humanity stuff that we collect during SCU (it's allll connected) which I'd never seen before and did not know existed. But basically...people leave a lot of stuff behind every spring. And that stuff earns about $100,000 at the Stuff Sale in the fall. Naht too shabby.

Anyway, I'm gonna get back to watching Cote play videogames (which is actually one of my favorite things to do).