[greenyes] Zero waste college graduation

["Bill Sheehan" <bill.sheehan@no.address>]

New York Times - June 4, 2005

All Is Recycled, Except for the Graduates

By Katie Zezima

There will be no Dumpsters for Kate Tompkins to use when she 
moves out of her dorm at College of the Atlantic this weekend. 
Garbage cans will also be banned from move-out and all graduation 
events. 

There will be no trash receptacles because, if all goes according to 
plan, there will be no trash.

College of the Atlantic, a 270-student liberal arts college in Bar 
Harbor, Me., known for its environmental friendliness - it offers 
one degree, in human ecology - is trying to hold a waste-free 
graduation.

Everything the college is using for the ceremony and the 
accompanying events, from cutlery to the kiwi vine rope used to 
separate the 55 graduates from their parents, will be recycled or 
composted, as will all waste generated by guests and students 
moving out. Everything that cannot be recycled will be used in a 
sculpture that students and guests will create, using wire to fasten 
the pieces, after today's ceremony.

Students are being asked to donate their old clothes to a local 
charity and old appliances to the college, which will sell them at a 
yard sale in the fall. Students staying in the area this summer will be 
the beneficiaries of half-empty bottles of shampoo and ketchup. 
Student volunteers clad in recycled organic cotton T-shirts will 
answer any recycling questions.

"Our main goal is to reuse the materials as much as possible, and 
our other goal is to make people realize the connection between 
what you purchase and what you throw away," said Millard Dority, 
the college's director of public safety, who conceived the idea after 
hearing of a Canadian town that tried to go waste-free. "We'll 
certainly recycle your bottle of water, and if you unwrap a 
PowerBar and don't finish it, that can be composted. But you're 
taking the wrapper home with you."

The college, which has an extensive recycling and composting 
program, bought compostable cutlery, plates and cups, all of which 
are made from cornstarch, for the weekend's events. The college 
also cut down on the amount of food it ordered and asked its 
suppliers (many of them small organic outlets) to cut down on 
packaging materials.

Students like Ms. Tompkins, 18, a freshman from Willow Grove, 
Pa., said they did not mind the extra sorting work.

"Most of the students are really receptive to it," she said. "It's not 
that much harder, when you think about it, to take an extra five 
minutes and separate your things into bins. It kind of gets everyone 
more involved and makes recycling a more central part of campus 
life."


/Bill Sheehan
Product Policy Institute