Waste

Waste is not a pretty picture, but good waste management is a beautiful thing. With a goal of cutting an additional 20% of emissions from waste by 2030, W&L's strategy focuses on landfill diversion through smart purchasing, intentional reuse, on-site composting and responsible recycling.  In August of 2022 W&L ended all sales of bottled water in campus venues, projected to cut over 11,000 single-use plastic bottles a year from our campus waste stream. With bottle filling stations and compostable cups available across campus, and reusable bottles for sale at a range of price points at the University Store, we can cut the plastic without cutting convenience.  All food waste and to-go ware from University Dining is composted at the campus Compost system, located next to the Campus Garden. Supported by an amazing student crew, W&L processed over 162,000 Lbs. of food waste in the 23-24 academic year, keeping it out of the landfill and sequestering an average of 17 tons carbon of carbon annually. The W&L Exchange helps reduce waste and unnecessary new purchasing by allowing supplies to circulate within the W&L community. One department's surplus office supplies are another department's alternative to an on-line order! Open to all campus departments/organizations and members of the W&L community for donations/cost-free "shopping." Check out <a href="/sustainability/sustainability-how-to/how-to-use-the-wandl-exchange" >How to use the W&L Exchange</a> for updated hours and inventory. Anything we can't avoid buying in the first place, reuse, or compost, we look to recycle. Our paper, aluminum, cardboard and 1&2 plastics from campus are recycled by RDS in Roanoke VA, keeping roughly 60 tons of material out of the landfill every year. E-Waste is collected from campus by Powerhouse Recycling, certified e-Stewards and R2, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 compliant, putting viable components back in circulation and keeping toxic elements out of the land fill. Check out the side bar for practical tips on doing waste right on campus. https://my.wlu.edu/x28924.xml https://my.wlu.edu/sustainability/climate-action/waste Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)