What Are We Throwing Away?

Over the past few weeks, the sustainability staff has carried out a waste audit to determine how much of the waste from campus apartments could in the future be diverted away from landfills. While rifling through garbage wasn't exactly pleasant, the results found were pretty staggering: over the course of the audit, a full 80% of waste from campus apartments was material that could either be recycled or composted. That means only 20% of the garbage was actually waste!

Graduation Attire Made of Recycled Plastic Bottles

For the 2011 graduating class, commencement is beginning to appear on the horizon. With just a quarter and a half to go, it is almost time to start preparing for the big event. Amidst all of the anticipation surrounding this milestone, here's some news that will make you even more excited about graduating: participating in this year's commencement will help save the planet.

That's right - all caps and gowns worn by this year's graduating class will be made from 100% post-consumer recycled bottles. An average of twenty-three plastic bottles will go into the making of each cap and gown.

A Plastic Ocean

In parts of the "Pacific Garbage Patch" there is more plastic than plankton, the crucial food source for fish and marine mammals.

Plastic.  It seems like just about everything we use is made of some type of plastic.  230 million tons of plastic are consumed worldwide every year.  Unfortunately, more than 90% of plastics are not recycled.  And since plastic does not biodegrade, the waste sticks around for hundreds, even thousands, of years.  This has resulted in a major ecological problem in the world's oceans.  Pollution, along with other human action like overfishing, has put the world's oceans in serious trouble.