The University of Southampton
SUSSED News

Reduce – Reuse – Recycle: Annual waste audit success

The annual waste audit was held on 22nd February. 95 students volunteered to sort through 69 bags of landfill and mixed recycling waste from University academic and residential sites. The students completed the sort in an amazing time of just 55 minutes. The main findings are:

i)          Overall the amount of recyclables in the landfill waste has declined slightly to 38% (from 42% in 2011). This change was a result of a major improvement on academic campuses (a drop from 53% to 35% of landfill waste consisting of recyclables). Unfortunately, the amount of recyclables in landfill waste for halls increased from 35% to 43%, despite more effort being put into communicating with students about the recycling scheme.

ii)         Despite introducing food collections in to the academic campuses in summer 2011, a quarter of the landfill waste was food. 14.5% was paper!

iii)       For the halls, 32% of the landfill waste was food but only 5.3% was paper.

These results show yet again we have an enthusiastic and motivated student body who are prepared to give up their time to sort through our rubbish. They also show we still have a long way to go to achieve the proposed target of 10% of landfill waste consisting of recyclables (by the 2013 audit).

We are piloting a two bin scheme in buildings 35 & 44 – one for food and one for everything else and are currently reviewing the results of the scheme to decide on how to take it forward.

Please contact Dr Neil Smith, Environment Manager ([email protected]) or Mike Travers, Campus Services Manager ([email protected]) if you have any questions about recycling at the University.

 
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