Dividing all waste into three categories ““ recycling, trash and compost ““ the residents of Sproul Hall piloted a new plan this week to promote sustainable living.
The “Zero-Waste” program, inviting Sproul Hall 2 North residents to convert refuse into a reusable product, began March 1 and ended Sunday night.
“Normally, Sproul Hall simply divides waste between recycling and trash, but we closed the trash chutes,” said Lisette Molina, the floor’s resident assistant. Sproul 2 North’s regular trash chutes were locked in an attempt to measure the amount of compost generated in the residence hall.
“We’ve educated people on what’s compostable,” Molina added. “Now they can either recycle, compost or throw trash away.”
Compost results from the decomposition of organic, biodegradable materials. It can be made from many items ““ including food, paper, cartons, coffee grounds and fruit ““ and can then be reprocessed into fertilizer. Trash, on the other hand, may include broken glass and products made of rubber, along with other resources that cannot be recycled or reused.
Twenty-four percent of the United States’ municipal solid waste stream results from compost, including yard trimmings and food residuals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site.
Thus, if compost is separated from trash, a great deal of material could be directed away from landfills and used instead to the environment’s benefit.
The weeklong program began as a class project for the Education for Sustainable Living Program at UCLA when the program’s students sought to make the dorms more eco-friendly, Molina said.
Molina’s floor is known for its sustainable living theme, she said, adding that the Sustainable Living Program students are responsible for the physical data collection.
“The research project that we’re doing is called the Action Research Project. It’s actually a course we’re taking,” said Spencer Hill, team leader of the Dorm Waste Action Research team.
“The project we’ve taken on is one of 10 others that looks at different entities and tries to make them more sustainable.”
Hill, who is also a second-year mathematics and atmospheric and oceanic sciences student, said his project was one of three sister projects looking at resources in the dorms.
“By locking the trash chute and putting the bins in we’re able to itemize all of the waste-stream from the entire floor,” Hill said.
The program’s students asked the dorm-dwellers to divide waste in order to distinguish which provides the best option for conservation.
Stephanie Jacobson, a first-year linguistics student who lives on the sustainable living floor, said dividing between compost and trash was extremely easy for her and the other residents on her floor.
“It’s really not hard at all,” Jacobson said, adding that she hopes the program will expand to the rest of campus as well.
She said she was surprised how little trash they actually generated compared to the compost and recycling.
The Dorm Waste Action Research team picked the waste up twice a day, and Hill said he has entered in about half the data so far.
Based on about half of what he has tabulated thus far, 110 pounds of overall waste was collected from Sproul 2 North, he said.
“Of that, we collected just over 20 pounds of trash, just under 60 pounds is compost and just under 30 pounds recycling,” he said.
The team’s students consequently determined that perhaps the chutes previously used for trash may be better used for compostable materials, since it composed a majority of the refuse.
“We want to show that a large enough percentage that is going to a landfill is compostable so UCLA can institute a composting program perhaps eventually covering the entire hill,” Hill said.
Molina expressed hopes that the UCLA community will recognize Sproul’s conservation efforts, adding that she is excited about the innovation of the program and has not heard of such a program at other universities.
“This is pretty new, and it’s maybe something that hasn’t been done before,” she said.