As a graduate student at WKU, I worked for the campus recycling program for three semesters. There is nothing like handling waste to learn about the activities and practices of an institution… or household… or society. After all, it is historic waste that archeologists are digging through, right? I’ve heard people say that future generations will refer to us as the “plastic people”, due to all the plastic that we leave behind in landfills, rivers, and oceans.
Handling WKU’s waste, and researching and compiling our waste and recycling statistics, it became clear to me that we generate a staggering amount of trash, most of which can be recycled but, sadly, is not (although we are making encouraging progress in our recycling rates).
Much of our waste is exactly that - waste. We all over-print, over-purchase and under-use. It’s heartbreaking to recycle pallets or boxes of unopened printed materials and, aside from the trees that had to be sacrificed, the financial waste seems incredibly irresponsible, especially in light of our current budget woes.
We have an entire warehouse full of used furniture, filing cabinets, computer monitors, and other items, most of which are thrown away or recycled because either nobody wants them or knows they are there.
Much of our waste is packaging: plastic bottles (which are worth very little as a recyclable), cardboard, Styrofoam, plastic bags, and other packaging materials.

The phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” may seem cliché but it’s really a brilliantly simple set of rules that we should all live by. As I circled the campus everyday picking up recyclables, the main thing that occurred to me was, this didn’t have to come on to our campus in the first place.
Plastic water bottles are my favorite example. It takes three liters of water to produce one liter bottle of water. The water from our taps is often held to higher standards than the water that is bottled for sale. For sale! We are buying water in bottles! It takes at most, 30 minutes to drink a bottle of water. The bottle lasts for longer than a lifetime. And plastic bottles are made from petroleum! In a world where so many people are without clean water to drink, plastic is floating over an area the size of Texas in our ocean, and wars are being waged over oil, bottled water is ridiculously unsustainable.
Many schools and communities have banned the use and sale of bottled water. The impact such a ban would have at WKU would be substantial, and most obvious and visible in our waste management.  

Alas, there are few that actually see the waste. If we could pile a weeks’ worth of waste on the South Lawn, it would not only be a disgusting spectacle, but would be fascinating and shocking eye-opener for everyone. On average, we produce 100,000 – 130,000 pounds of waste per week on the WKU main campus.

It is for these reasons and others that the WKU Sustainability Committee has made the creation of a sustainable purchasing program a priority for advancing sustainability at WKU. In the coming months, we will provide guidelines for products and services that are responsibly manufactured, durable, locally made, and that use less or recyclable packaging, use less energy, and contain recycled content. Until then, please remember to reduce first, re-use second, and then recycle.