By Markus Min
After securing our grant for a pilot program of Bigbelly Waste and Recycling Stations on the UCLA campus, we have moved forward with our project and are currently in the process of nailing down the specifications and getting approval for the installation of this more efficient and sustainable system of waste collection. We have been speaking to representatives from Bigbelly and our stakeholder, Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer Bonny Bentzin, to determine what specifications are the best fit for UCLA, and hope to place an order for a Bigbelly unit within the next few weeks. Through the installation of the first Bigbelly units on the UCLA campus, we hope to catalyze the adoption of these waste collection systems on a greater scale, similar to the plan shown in the picture above.
In addition to our Bigbelly project, we are also moving forward with our other projects, which are focused on conducting a GIS study of rodent issues on campus and documenting evidence of rodents on campus. Our GIS project has made slow progress recently due to the difficulty of acquiring GIS-compatible data for our analysis, but our team is finding creative ways to overcome these obstacles. The project dedicated to documenting evidence of rodents on campus is still in its early stages, but we have come up with a project outline and are working on acquiring the necessary equipment. We hope to make a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks of the Winter Quarter and are looking forward to the next stages of our projects!