Balancing Convenience with Efficiency to Achieve Zero Waste

By: Emma Stanfield, Zachary Devereux, Caroline Schreck, Maia Rodriguez-Choi, Cali Ngyuen, and Elizabeth Popescu.

The UA Waste Diversion team is taking strides to implement composting programs in key university apartments, with the support and knowledge of our stakeholder Erin Fabris. This week, we planned a walkthrough of the UA’s with existing composting systems, which will take place next week. By seeing firsthand what previous SAR teams have accomplished, as well as sharing a dialogue with the custodial team, we can learn from their successes and improve their struggles. One of the most important aspects for fostering resident participation in our efforts will be convenience of infrastructure (e.g. compost bins), so this walkthrough will be useful in understanding how to balance convenience for residents with efficiency for maintenance staff.

Our next venture will be to conduct a baseline waste audit of our chosen University Apartments, getting our hands dirty sorting waste in order to determine diversion levels from landfill as well as the proportion of proper sorting in general. By collecting this initial data, our team, our stakeholder and the UA staff, as well as the UA residents will be able to quantify the impact of our composting program on waste diversion levels.