By Eco Ambassador Anna Arriaga
It’s official! The nationwide Campus Race to Zero Waste competition ended on March 25, 2023 after running since January on campus here at Emerson College. After three months of non-stop events, hard work, and campaigning to promote waste diversion, the results are in.
Before getting to how we did as a school, let’s recap all of the events and efforts that we put on to promote the cause.
First, we had the Residence Hall Recycling Challenge from February 6th to the 10th. During this week, the Eco Ambassadors and our Associate Director of Sustainability weighed the trash and recycling on a randomly selected floor in each residence hall each day. Then, we compared the ratios of recycling to total waste to see how much waste was being diverted from the trash. 2 Boylston Place and Paramount tied for first place with average recycling rates of 47 percent.
To match that, we hosted the Office Recycling Challenge from February 13th to the 17th, where we also compared the weight of trash to recycling in participating offices around campus.The winner was the Journalism Production Center with an impressive average recycling rate of 80.9 percent that week! Coming in a very close second was the Lacerte Family Writing & Academic Resource Center with an 80.7 percent recycling rate.
After that, we had a fun and informative field trip to Waste Management’s recycling facility in Billerica on February 17th. We had a great turnout and learned a bunch about where our recycling goes! You can learn more about the trip in Sasha Zirin’s piece for the Berkeley Beacon.
We hosted two “Weigh the Waste” events in the Dining Hall during dinner on February 27th and March 20th where students got a chance to see exactly how much food they wasted or a chance to be a part of the Clean Plate Club! Interested in the results of our Weigh the Waste campaign so far this year? Check out this blog post summarizing our performance. Spoiler: we’re getting better!
To close off festively, we had the Upcycled Art Competition on March 22nd in the Iwasaki Library with vegan donuts and cash prizes for our most creative students. Read more about the event on the blog here. The day before, we had a Clean Out Your Office Day for faculty and staff, which provided some supplies for the event, along with 320 pounds of office supplies that we donated.
Well, here are the results from the 2023 Campus Race to Zero Waste: We placed 78th nationwide out of 90 participating schools in the diversion category with a waste diversion rate of 14.5 percent. You can explore the full results here.
Here’s how we stacked up against our Massachusetts peers every week of the 8 week program:
While we weren’t at the very top, our main goal for participating this year was to obtain a performance baseline and promote waste diversion generally around campus.Expanding our campus’s knowledge about the difference between compost, trash, and recycling, and how exactly to sort waste benefits our entire community.
We can’t wait to do better next year and keep the momentum going!