Washington and Lee University
OP-18: Waste Minimization and Diversion

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Baseline date was chosen based on the year documentation was comprehensive enough to allow meaningful future benchmarking.

The University Store accepts cardboard boxes from departments and individuals on campus and uses them to package and ship on-line orders store orders.
During a recent renovation of the main dining hall kitchen spaces, old equipment was sold through on-line auction rather than taken to the landfill.

Recycling first passes through custodial staff, who remove bags from bins and set them out for collection by the sanitation team. Two sanitation leads then collect the recycling from buildings and transfer it to on-campus roll-offs, which are then periodically transported to our regional recycling center. Both the custodial staff and the sanitation leads will evaluate the clear bags for excessive contamination at their point of contact and are asked to report issues to the Office of Sustainability so that signage and education efforts can be evaluated and increased as needed. Sanitation leads will pull obvious contaminants before transferring material to the roll-offs. Any load of recycling delivered to our regional center with excessive contamination is rejected, with notice provided back to campus.

Several initiatives have been introduced over the last year to strengthen existing waste management practices and create new avenues of waste minimization. Examples include:
1.The Office of Sustainability established a new campus re-use resource, the W&L Exchange. Departments and individuals in the campus community are encouraged to donate items they no longer need to the Exchange, and to use it as a first resource when seeking new (to them) items. This reduces both waste and unnecessary purchasing.
2.The Office of Sustainability produced new signage to better promote and explain recycling and composting on campus, and worked with residential Advisors to change the location of bins in the residence hall locations based on student feedback about how placement will best encourage proper use.
3. Working together, University Facilities, University Dining and the Sustainability Office have cemented a new default policy to make compost collection automatically part of all catered university events.
4. Compost collection stations have been added to residence halls and sorority houses, expanding on a collection route that was previously limited to dining venues.

Detailed daily compost collection logs are kept to track volume of waste produced at each collection point. This is done both to track what is diverted from the landfill but also to monitor food waste trends that are useful to dining services as they fine-tune their practices (menus, portions etc).
The Office of Sustainability also tracks landfill and recycling numbers, benchmarking against the same month in the previous year and analyzing in the context of campus events to pinpoint areas of opportunities and examples of success. For example, this year for the first time our main Young Alumni Weekend meals and other October campus wide events included comprehensive post-consumer compost collection. Our landfill waste for that month was 20 tons less than the same period the previous year.

1. In August 2022 W&L ended sales of bottled-water in all campus dining/retail venues and catering operations. Incoming undergraduate and law students were all given a voucher for a high-quality water bottle, and additional bottle-filling stations were installed in key campus locations. Dining indicated that previous to this change Auxiliary Services sold roughly 11,000 bottles of water/year. Through this change, we have eliminated this source of single-use plastic from our waste stream.

2. The institution's Sustainable Purchasing Guidelines serve as a general reference document. The Office of Sustainability has also launched an initiative called the "Less paper, More Trees!" program that works with departments to review their printing records and identify ways to reduce paper use.

The W&L Exchange, described above, is our campus resource for office supplies exchange.

In addition to the W&l Exchange, the University's "Campus Notices" is a daily email serving as a community billboard. It includes a "classified" section that is a highly effective way for members of the campus community (local community members may also subscribe) to exchange goods and services on a regular basis.
Last year our Student Environmental Action League (SEAL) introduced a fantastic new special event. With logistical and financial support from university administration, SEAL hosted an enormous campus-wide yard sale. Held in May, it was a great opportunity for students to resell items prior to move-out. Faculty and staff were also invited to participate as both buyers and vendors. It was hugely successful and will be an annual event from here out.

In addition to the "Less Paper, More Trees!" initiative mentioned above, double-sided printing is the default on all University printers. Students and departments alike are charged for printing, with single-sided and color ink charged at a higher price, encouraging awareness.
The University has worked over the last several years to move to a system of networked printers/copiers, serviced by Copy Services. ITS no longer services independent office printers. This allows for careful tracking of paper and ink usage and for comprehensive annual reporting usage by department, allowing meaningful analysis of usage patterns and waste reduction opportunities.

The University Course catalog, Student Handbook, Faculty/Staff Handbook and all University policies are published on-line and only provided in paper form by specific request.

The University works with our local Habitat for Humanity to facilitate donations during move-out. Habitat parks donation tucks at each residence hall, and two in our large apartment-style housing village, and the Offices of Sustainability and Residential Life promotes Move-Out donations through social media campaigns and direct partnerships with Residential Advisors.

Move-in guidance provided to all incoming students from the Office of Residential Life in the "What to Bring" document highlights sustainability initiatives and ways to reduce waste, including the following guidance:

"The Office of Residence Life supports W&L’s Climate Action Plan, which includes reducing energy and material waste. Electronics should have automatic shut offs where applicable and be Energy Star rated when possible. Students are encouraged to minimize single-use items as much as possible and focus instead on items that will be useful throughout the year. For example, don’t bring a case of plastic utensils, bring one set of reusable utensils and a sponge!
No matter how carefully you pack, though, move-in can generate a lot of waste. W&L has campus-wide recycling, composting and E-waste collection to reduce how much of this ends up in the landfill. Visit https://my.wlu.edu/sustainability/sustainability-how-to to familiarize yourself with proper waste disposal on campus for waste-reduction on move-in day, and every day.

Ask your Resident Advisor (RA) or Community Assistant (CA) for cost, energy, and space saving tips!"