When we think something no longer has value, we throw it away. We call it garbage, trash, junk or waste. It piles up in landfill sites that leach poisons into soil and water. Perhaps the biggest garbage dump in our region is the ocean, where the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an expansive plastic soup of debris, stretches across the Northern Pacific Ocean and damages marine life.

From global garbage to household junk, we need to think–and act–differently about waste. A good start is to think cradle to cradle before making consumer choices: to consider the energy, water, raw materials and waste involved in a product’s creation, and what happens to a product at the end of its life cycle. The ultimate goal is to send less waste to landfills. This means we need to find new value and purpose for waste, and view it as a potential resource that can be converted or reclaimed for other uses.

The UBC campus, a city within a city, is an ideal living laboratory to discover and demonstrate solutions to waste management. We already reduce, reuse, recycle and responsibly manage our waste. Our short term goal is to divert 55 per cent of solid waste from the landfill. But there is much more we can do.

Ultimately, we can aspire to achieve zero waste on campus. An important first step is to understand what we throw away and why through a campus-wide waste audit. Much has changed since the last UBC waste review more than a decade ago. Both the campus infrastructure and the student body have grown considerably. The new waste audit will help us better understand our waste streams, and the results will inform an integrated waste management plan that will guide future UBC policies, reduction strategies and infrastructure improvements.

While we plan for the future at UBC, we also trash traditional attitudes to waste on campus. What was once considered garbage with no useful purpose, except to populate the landfill, is now regarded as a potential resource. From kitchen scraps composted, to construction waste reused, to lab chemicals exchanged, we examine our waste streams to find ways to reincarnate garbage.

REDUCE

Reduction is the single most important step in waste management. As we make efforts to understand the makeup of our waste streams, we actively work to reduce them.

Greening our Supply Chain

We apply this reduction thinking to green our supply chain. We work with vendors to encourage them to align with our sustainability objectives. We ask them to get smarter about how they ship to us, to reuse or recycle packaging–and to plan for what’s left over.

For instance, when a key supplier switched from disposable packaging to reusable delivery totes, we saved 3,400 pounds of packaging in the first year. The supplier then introduced reusable totes to all its clients and achieved a ripple effect of financial and environmental savings nationally. In addition, we analyzed shipping patterns and shifted deliveries from twice a day to twice a week and reduced greenhouse gas emissions to campus by 88 per cent.

Promoting Reusable Containers

An estimated 40 per cent of the waste produced at food service outlets on campus is made up of disposable containers, such as coffee cups and paper plates–a big environmental price to pay for a fleeting convenience.

UBC Food Services, a leader in campus food system sustainability, has worked aggressively to reduce waste in the last decade. Students, staff and faculty receive a 15-cent discount at campus food outlets for using personal mugs or dishes. In addition, students at Place Vanier and Totem Park residences each receive a complimentary reusable container so they can benefit from the discount. These residences, along with other dining locations on campus, provide real china and cutlery, while non-franchise food outlets on campus supply compostable takeout ware.

Between March and December 2008, the introduction of compostable containers diverted over 75,000 non-biodegradable containers from the landfill.

In another innovative waste reduction initiative, UBC Food Services reuses cooking oil to support scientific research and even create energy. Food Services contributes waste French fry cooking oil to the UBC Biodiesel Project which is developing ways to convert kitchen oil into fuel to power UBC’s maintenance vehicles.

REUSE

Finding new ways to use old things is one of the more creative aspects of waste management. It encourages us to abandon the popular notion that new is best, and instead find resourceful ways to reuse materials.

Diverting Construction Waste

As we build new green communities and new institutional buildings on campus, we seek to reuse and recycle construction and demolition waste. For example, 50 per cent of construction materials for the C.K. Choi building were reused or recycled, including all of the exterior bricks. In addition, structural timbers, office doors, bathroom sinks and staircase handrails were salvaged from buildings that were demolished in the region.

Recycled and reused materials are integrated throughout Sustainability Street, a pedestrian-oriented demonstration project on campus. Granite used in paving, water bars and weirs were retrieved from demolished portions of the Vancouver College of Theology.

All new UTown@UBC residential buildings must meet UBC’s stringent Residential Environmental Assessment Program (REAP) guidelines that require mandatory diversion of 75 per cent of construction waste. In addition, all new institutional buildings on campus must divert 50 per cent of construction waste from landfill and achieve a minimum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Gold or equivalent rating. Both REAP and LEED guidelines encourage design strategies that reduce and reuse material resources and select building materials that are environmentally preferable.

Composting

Most of the approximately 350 tonnes of organic waste UBC produces each year can be reused. Kitchen scraps, paper, yard refuse and sawdust all have the potential to become food for the UBC gardens in the form of environmentally friendly, additive-free organic fertilizer.

Currently running at near capacity, the UBC in-vessel composter is the first of its kind at a Canadian University. It is an award-winning operation that models large-scale composting to the surrounding community, and other Canadian institutions. In the UBC system, organic matter is decomposed in a mechanized, fully enclosed vessel to produce nutrient-rich fertilizer. The compost program is actively supported across campus with collection receptacles in many locations, including academic buildings, student residences and food service outlets.

Chemical Exchange

UBC’s Chemical Exchange Program is another example of an innovative reuse program on campus that reduces chemical purchasing and disposal costs. Operated in accordance with all provincial and federal health and safety regulations, this free service identifies and catalogues chemicals on campus that are no longer of use to the original user. Potential users in labs and classrooms throughout campus can then apply on-line to use otherwise excess chemicals for teaching or research.

RECYCLE

Well-established recycling programs at UBC actively turn waste into a resource. Blue and gray bins all over campus collect paper and cans, bottles and plastics. UBC Waste Management also recycles special items like office furniture and equipment, fluorescent tubes, batteries, wood, and metal.

My Waste, My Responsibility

UBC’s desk-side recycling program challenges people to take responsibility for reducing their own office waste. In general, discarded paper makes up 85 per cent of office waste, so users can make a big difference in waste reduction. The My Waste, My Responsibility recycling program equips over 5,000 individual workstations across campus with a personal blue deskside recycling bin and a small black garbage attachment, and empowers people to acknowledge, sort and dispose of their own waste.

Electronics Recycling

Where we were once swimming in paper, we now risk drowning in electronic waste. Rapid advances in technology make computer equipment obsolete before you can say ‘click’. As a result, e-waste is the fastest growing source of waste in North America. E-waste does not decompose in landfills and can cause toxic substances such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and nickel to leach into soil and water. Therefore, responsible stewardship of e-waste is essential.

UBC is an active supporter of the province-wide electronic waste recycling program. Over 36 tonnes of electronic waste, including computers, monitors and printers, were responsibly recycled in 2008.

RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT

Hazardous wastes are a by-product of conducting innovative, world-class research. Our first priority is to manage, handle and dispose of hazardous waste in compliance with all provincial and federal regulations–and in harmony with UBC’s commitment to a sustainable society. We also look for new and progressive ways to reduce the environmental footprint of our research programs. The UBC Environmental Services Facility consolidates, recycles, reuses, neutralizes and responsibly disposes of laboratory wastes and hazardous materials. Two innovative waste reduction programs include the silver and solvent recovery programs.

Silver, found in photographic waste, is toxic to fish and prohibited from entering the sewer system. The Silver Recovery Program reclaims silver by running the photographic fixer through an ion exchange column. The recovered silver is reused by a refinery and the corrosive liquid is neutralized before disposal.
The Solvent Recovery Program identifies organic waste solvents, then segregates and purifies them to technical grade for reuse in campus labs.

WASTE-FREE BEHAVIOUR

Achieving our zero waste vision requires the participation of everyone who lives, works and learns on campus. The Waste Free UBC Committee is a cross-functional group of students, academics, operational experts and neighbours that brainstorms and collaborates to identify campus waste reduction strategies and diversion opportunities. They also promote individual waste-free behavior and identify strategies to overcome barriers to behavior change.

We can start reducing waste by adapting some of UBC’s institutional practices to our individual lives. We can reject unnecessary packaging, reuse food containers, shopping and lunch bags, compost yard and kitchen refuse, salvage old building materials for the next home renovation, recycle paper, glass, plastics and electronics, and continually seek new ways to clean up our relationship with waste.