Welcome to our second webinar in the sustainability series. I'm Jen Mozi. You also might only a chef. Jen. I'm the employee health and well-being nutrition Outreach Coordinator. And I also teach norm normally or in the regular sex regular sessions, semesters, I guess the non-covalent. I teach cooking classes for the students to better health and nutrition called sustainability and food. So as I said in the beginning one, this has kind of become a purpose of mine sustainability. So with that, we're going through this series. So today we have a person who was not only her purpose, but it is her job at is sustainability. And Mrs. Michelle Bennett, She is the University of Delaware sustainability manager. She came to us in 2015 to provide leadership across these campuses in positioning the university to be a leader in sustainability in higher education. She has her master's degree in Environmental Studies and also has an expertise as an energy efficiency analysts. Home. She has greatest experience in environmental sustainability in Sydney, Australia. One of my dream trips. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sit back and barring any sort of, you know, internet instability. Felt. This all goes well. We'll go ahead and turn it over to Michelle. So welcome, Michelle. Thank you. So hi guys. Thanks for coming today. We're gonna talk a little bit about waste recycling and a little bit about the sustainability programming we do have, have here on campus or available, I should say. So we'll just go ahead and dive right in. So quick overview, sustainability has been on campus for almost ten years. For a long time. It was all organized in the sustainability task force, which was a volunteer organization on campus. They made the first climate action plan. They made our first greenhouse gas inventory. And we have this commitment to reduce our carbon related emissions 20% by 2020, which back in the day was like a huge ambitious commitment, like it was like OMG University, Delaware. And then a lot of that ended up sitting with facilities before I came to campus and facilities that did most of those items they were able to do. Some of them had I'd like some engineering issues across tissues. But the once they can do They did. I joined University in 2015. And then just this past spring we launched a Sustainability Council on campus. So they're charged with renewing the climate action plan because it's like ten years old now, more than that. And we're also doing like a whole campus wide sustainability plan. It's got students, it's got faculty has got staff on there. And also topical subcommittees. So about everything from like landscaping to carbon reductions to whatever. So keep an eye out on our website. Don't worry, shameless self-promotion will occur. To check that out if you ever want to see if we're recruiting for subcommittees. So recycling, the history recycling on campus, we got started in like the mid nineties and students, students did it. They just DIY did there like we should be doing. This. University is moving too low. They got a grant and they like had collection bins for like the glass had been for the plastic, et cetera. You'd bring it from across campus to the one collection location. And then like students drove the truck, they got their hands on a garbage truck somewhere and just drove into the recycle center? Yeah. Just DIY. So the mercy fell below sheepish. Late nineties, professionalized it. So university grounds department actually does all of our municipal waste hauling. So that's all the big stuff, you know, trash recycling, obviously not hazardous waste. And then in the two thousands. And he goes like 20112012, delaware went single strict name. So instead of having a glass band your plastic in and like a limit and had been everything goes in the one been super convenient, right. So waste collection there like five departments in charge of all the waste collection. So grounds obviously custodians take out to the dumpster or grants can get it. And then there's the H and S and a couple of other players for special types of waste. The great thing about having all this managed internally is that we have operational control. If we want to experiment with something, we want to try it out. We want to do a study, any of that. We don't have to go to a contractor and like worry about scope creep or kind of, you know, try to convince them to put a little more skin in the game. I also typically run internship programs and we have students like go out on the green and do waste audits. They put on the space seats for safety and like sort try bags, trash bags, recycling on the green and weigh everything. And they also helped write a grant that was funded in brought a 100 over a $100 thousand to campus for some operation improvements, communications, fancy posters also available on our website. Stay tuned. So that's kinda the history on campus, long and storied as you can tell. So I'd like to get composting out of the way because everyone wants to know why we don't compost short answers we use still. In 20122014, we send everything to a facility and Wilmington folk from this part of Delaware probably remember that facility. It shut down and had some contamination issues. Too much sugar, fat, and dairy. And it was wafting wonderful when you gas until local neighborhoods, which is actually not good for your health. So they shut it down. We need an industrial scale facility guys. Like we have a lot of food waste. So the nearest facility that's large enough, it's almost 1000 miles away. And anything more than like 50 miles. We are not making any environmental benefits or gains and we're spending a lot of money because food waste is really heavy. It has a lot of moisture in it. So that's all fuel me at ours for not a lot of environmental benefits. When I talk to grounds about composting, they're focuses on the environmental benefits. It's like money is an issue, obviously, especially right now, but like. Their motivation is the environmental side. So we're always looking for more food waste solutions. So here are some solutions that are on campus and some solutions that were kind of thinking about in Caesar Rodney, one of the largest dining halls on the east coast. We have anaerobic digesters. They're super neat. They look like a big metal like square bin. And you open it up, you put your food waste in there. Like as long as it's not super dense like bones are like pineapple coerce. It all goes in there. And these magical proprietary enzymes from this company break everything down and it comes out as a really thin, grossly can sludge at the bottom, it goes to the sewer drain. So those bad boys, there's two of them. They can combined convert over 3 thousand pounds of food waste. Daly. That's what their specs allow. I can tell you our guys run those things more than a 100% of the spec sheet. So it's probably closer to 4 thousand pounds of food waste and an average semester day. So in a normal times, October, and that's what we'll be doing every day. Just Caesar Rodney alone. We looked into installing more in our other dining halls, but spaces in commercial kitchens are really tight. If you worked in commercial kitchens at anytime in your life, you're probably well familiar with how crowded they can be and between requiring a drain, a sewer line drain, and the space requirements. We just haven't been able to make the moons aligned yet. We're also doing research on campus about anaerobic digestion, which got autocorrect a two direction in my slideshow. And that's with the College of Engineering. Obviously the Chemistry Department, biochemistry are involved. The College of Agriculture, Natural Resources are involved. And they're just doing research into generating bio-gas including with some of the aerobic digest state. So that grid, that wonderful grace sludge that comes out of the bottom there playing around with anaerobic digestion. Fruit with that, anaerobic digestion uses bacteria as opposed. I mean, enzymes are involved, but bacteria dried it instead of just magical enzymes. And if you can take your bio-gas and purify it into natural gas, it can be registered as a renewable resource, which is super interesting. Most people don't think of renewable forms of natural gas generation. So that's my composting food waste primer. Most food waste on campus is post-consumer. So that means it's after someone's grabbed a tray or plate. Behind the kitchen. They uses many of the trainings as possible for things like vegetable stock. They make their own salad dressing, et cetera, et cetera. So that's, that's a profit point that they can control, the earmark can control. So they're really strict about that when they're preparing food, doesn't mean there's no food waste, just not as much as people think. So. Yeah, just encouraged people to take what they want and then eat with they take. We have to be really careful when we communicate about that because we don't want to imply that all of those expensive and valuable Neil point plans should not be enjoyed to their fullest extent because that makes students and parents really angry. Those things are pretty pricey. So we try to stay positive when we're communicating about that. So we're cycling, reducing, reusing, recycling rates. So on campus we do our waste audits, as previously mentioned. And in the waste audits, we identify the items that get into the recycling and shouldn't be in there. Normally, what happens is everyone's like, yeah, daughter cycle like the paper, the cardboard, aluminum, glass can or glass bottles everyone has like those in the bag. Plastic is where we find the most confusion and there's no surprise, right? Think about all the different plastic packaging we encounter. Everything from the little bubble that's like shaped exactly like the item you're buying, that you take it off the little hook and you've got the thing right up to plastic bags, right up to strawberry fruit containers, that kind of thing. So the first thing I like to remind people is don't put no free again, plastic bags in the recycling please. And that stuff can go XP grocery store, they collect it, they have special bins for it. But the reason is it gets tangled up in the recycling machinery, in the recycling center and it frequent breaks it, and that's really expensive and dangerous to repair. So strongly discourage you to put any kind that includes plastic liner banks. So if you're putting your recycling in a bin and you have a plastic liner bag and that Ben, you gotta take them recyclables out of that bag when they get out to the curb because it creates a real hazard. And at the recycling center, if they see a plastic bag, they throw it in a trash bin. They don't even they don't open it. No, it's got time for that. Straight to the trash. So please remove cling film Saran wrap, all that stuff, get it out there. Plates and utensils. So those tend to be like a good quality food grade plastic. The problem is we don't have the machines to sort them. So the sorting is like the bottleneck in recycling everywhere in the country, everywhere in the world. So if you don't have the magical like $3 million machine to get forks and another magical $3 million machine to get plates. Then they know they can't get sorted, they can't get recycled. So don't put those guys in Delaware. Don't put them in recycling lids. You can leave them on, no problem. If they fall off, don't worry. Don't worry about the lids. And if you rinse everything, you know, you don't have to scrub it. It doesn't need to go through the, the washing machine. But if you give it a good solid rinse your, your bins not going to get gross in those. You don't need the liner bags. As urgently will say. One thing people are a little surprised about is shredded paper. Shredded paper. It's the same problem as plastic bags. It gets caught up in the machines. It's just that perfect shape till I get the gears and mark everything up or classifier. So you can take those to dendritic drop off sites and I'll show you where those guys are on the next slide. Also, if you in the office of a company that manages your documents like they store them, keep them secure or destroy them. They'll shred and recycle that stuff for you. So at home, Detrick has shredding events and they do recycle the shredded paper when they're done. So if you have a bunch of documents, take them down to one of these events and no like shred and recycle it for you. Besides that, Rails people kind of have in the bag, I get a lot of questions about waxy like soup curtains that are are paper-based. Those guys can get recycled. They have a way to get the wax off. But if you have the plastic ones like the little Capri Sun guys that are plastic underneath those are non-recyclable. Sorry guys. Delivery boxes, everyone's good with those. Please bring them down if you can. Fun fact, if you recycle aluminum of any kind, can aluminum foil, if it's clean, greasy, food covered aluminum foil can't be recycled. If you recycle that in Delaware, it goes to the Midwest, a large beverage company of which our students are very familiar. We'll take that aluminum, recycle it and it'll be back and your hand is a cold beverage in 60 days or less. Fun fact. So that kind of stuff doesn't even leave the country. Arguably the region plus the bag scared, recycled in New Jersey of all places. If you take them back to there, the grocery store. So we do have recycling events on campus. Almost all of them are down at the Star campus so people can drive and drive out. There is a New York drop off sites. So if you've got like batteries, you change your motor oil styrofoam, you can take all that to 470 corporate boulevard. It's not far from campus. They do have specific days to drop-off household hazardous wastes. So that would be like miscellaneous chemicals, paint, that kind of thing. And then they have specialties for document shredding so you can check out their website for it's like every second, Wednesday, that kind of thing. And then every spring we have you don't needed events on campus. They're really geared towards student move out, but really anyone can bring, bring items. We're not going to like have a bouncer at the door. And we do it with Dell or solid waste. We do it with city of Newark. So it's the same thing is that it's basically a pop-up Newark drop off site every spring. I think they even did it this past spring even though students were not here, but I'm, I'm not a 100% sure that actually gets organized in the president's office, which is super cool. Batteries and electronics. A lot of the big box stores have drop-offs. Sometimes like, like I heard, Best Buy has a small female, but they do get reused. Or actually companies are really hungry for the lithium, so that's a really good recycling stream. And then some manufacturers will buy them back like no, cut you a check. So you might want to might want to check that out. And in plastic bags to the grocery store. I'm going to sneak that into this presentation as many times as possible, even though you already know. So since contamination is such a problem, the rule of thumb is that if you're not sure about something thrown in the trash and I know that's a little, you know, anticlimactic. It's a little it's not like, you would assume, like you want to hope that it's recyclable and you'd want to throw it in there. But because sorting is such an issue, that's actually kinda the worst thing you can do. So please, if you're not sure about something like, I don't expect you to pull out your phone and like get your cycling app out and figure out if this individual item is recyclable or not because there's like dozens and dozens of items that we deal with on a regular basis. So thrown in the trash. And then if you want to look it up later, go for it. But the really big things or any kind of like utensil or plate, Don't do it. Straws not recyclable. The two go like paper coffee cups. They're not recyclable because they've got a liner on and that's really hard to get off. And then anything that's kinda get tangled up in the machines. So that's like the plastic bags in the shredded paper we already talked about, but also like string lights. If you've got a bunch of old like Christmas lights, you can take those to the like drop off site in Newark, but don't tell them in their recycling. Like we want the copper, but it's going to destroy the machine. So and then something that we shouldn't have to tell people, but it comes up a lot. Is anything that's kinda like under pressure or a chemical hazard. Like don't if if you have like a bottle that's like half full of like, I don't know, prayer something do not put it in. Recycling guy is even a little bit of pressurized air can like really mess things up. They've had major fires at the recycling center because people tried to recycle propane tanks, do not recommend you. Someone could get hurt or killed. If that happens. Same thing, frilly cleaning chemicals and paint. If it's an empty bottle, that's fine. Detergent, empty cleaning count, like that's fine. But if there's like a bunch of stuff sloshing around in there, guys like dispose of that stuff safely, please. Because again, it can react with other stuff in the recycling center, the trash, and start a chemical reaction. And usually that involves a lot of fire, occasionally deadly chemicals like chlorine gas. So let me see if I can get this to run. Oh, no, I had a cool give hearing. Of course. It's not going into it. Okay. Well, this was a cool video. It's also on our YouTube channel. On YouTube and look for you to you Delaware sustainability, you'll see it. But it's the actual sorting machine. So the paper, this is mostly a paper one, but there's plastic kind of mixed in. It comes up our little conveyer belt here. And in the bottom in this pit, there are all these like churning arms. And basically they're having a party, everything's dancing around in there and the lighter weight stuff bounces up to the top and the heavier stuff filters down to the bottom. And that's how they, oh, oh, it's going to work. Do at internet, do it. It's party time. Alright, so that's how they sort paper. Super neat, right? It's very loud. I turned off the volume. But you can see all the plastic bags and stuff in there. And all that stuff's gonna get caught in those arms that are spinning. So just an IEP video. We have a couple of other neat videos. We do tours to the recycling center for internships and keep trying to open them up to a wider UD audience. But there's help and safety concerns. So and also like they can only take very small groups because recycling centers not only setup for tours. So stay tuned and keep working on that. Whoops. Okay. So contamination. Why is it so terrible? Why isn't the big C word AND recycling? When we rock up to the recycling center with a garbage truck full oversight lengths, and university owns a couple garbage trucks. They use the same trucks for trash and recycling. It's just like Mondays trash DAY, Tuesdays recycling day, et cetera. We rock up with our garbage sharp slash recycling truck to the center. They take a look in the back of it. And if just the the the backlight portion of the hall, if they see a bunch of contamination there, like Get out of here. Like we don't want that stuff. So then our guys have to turn around. They still pay like an admin fee, and then they have to go to the landfill. And at the end of the day, between the tipping fees and the fuel and blah, blah, blah. It doubles our cost to do that run. So, you know, they're cycling center doesn't want stuff that's super contaminated because of all the the sorting issues we already discussed. So that's why, you know, trying to get like the plastic bags and all that stuff out of the recycling stream is so important. It just helps everyone along the way. Alright, so here's the next question. Lately there's been a lot of upheaval in the recycling industry. China and a couple of other countries like India. There's a couple listed here, Thailand, Vietnam. They were all, they all just decided they're tired of our junk basically were other less professional words for our trash. And they're like we're not taken it anymore. And a big part of the problem was that sorting, like they would say, Okay, we'll take all your number two plastic and they'd have like a ton of late number three, number five mixed in and they're like, we can't afford to like sort through this junk. So they're just like now we have plenty of around. We're tired of like taking the world's trash, like you get out here. We don't want it anymore. And since we don't have good recycling infrastructure in the United States, especially for plastics like aluminum and certain things like the plastic bags were pretty good but that's because we're using them. So my train. So it's like, oh god what now? So the recycling industry has really been struggling with that. They're trying to build up places to take. Um, you know, people are expanding their capacity both nationally and internationally, et cetera, et cetera. But it shook things up, right? So basically what happens here in Delaware specifically is our recycling center only makes money if they can sort and sell the stuff. That's their whole business plan. So they want to sell it like they will stockpile number two plastic until they don't have room for it all because they're just like, you know, we can't afford to send it. Like if if they take it to the landfill, they have to pay tipping fees and they bailed these things in like six by six foot cubes. That way, you know, a non-trivial weight. So if they're paying per pound, that's like huge rates. So these guys throwing it away is the last resort for them. But if they don't have a choice, they don't have a choice. The cleaner the recycling is, the easier it is to sell. So if they can guarantee that they're like number two plastic is 99% like number two plastic, then it's much easier for them to find a buyer for their six by six foot cubes. Another issue we have in the US is the recycling really is decentralized, which is unlike a 100% a bad thing. But it just means that like every little town has its own sorting machines and every little Lake County has its a different system. And that makes it really confusing for consumers. In Delaware, recycling is the same in the whole state, which is great. That's the whole single stream thing. And Delaware. Everywhere in Delaware, recycling rules are the same. If you go down to the beach, it's the same roles. If you're in New York, it's the same roles if your on-campus, off-campus, same roles. But most Pennsylvania, Maryland, it's typically like town to town and county by county what they do and don't accept. So that just makes it super confusing. If someone moves five miles and their recycling rules are completely different, do they accept number five plastic? Who knows? What is number five plastic? I don't know. It's a thing. So that is part of why sorting is such a problem in the US. So we can't control international commodity markets. Like individuals don't control that supply, demand regulations. People not wanting our crap. Like we can't control that, but we can influence them. And the way to do that is to be really strict about sorting our plastics. But also to kind of think about what we're purchasing in the hole, the hole, a stream beginning to end for that item. So, you know, for example, and, you know, my friends and family definitely are all over Keurig, which is great. We have it in the office. But one of the first things when I started working here, So I went down to our wonderful office administrative professionals and I'm like, can we get those reusable Keurig cups? And we we didn't, we decided not to issue everyone a cup even though they're super cheap and affordable, they're like $0.50 or something of a pop. If you buy like a package of them individually, there's still like a dollar. But we did have a couple in right there at the Keurig machine and they're super easy to use. You just rinse them out after you use them. And it cuts like the plastic waste down tremendously. Which also means at the end of the day, our trash can isn't just like overflowing with like soggy care eggs. So a little thing like that, even if you're keeping your Keurig machine, but you just switch to the reusable Keurig like pod is huge because you cannot you cannot recycle little hearings. Water filters, like I know in New York, water is not super delicious. But that stuff through water-filter, it's, it's actually a lot healthier than bottled water. Guys. Most bottled water in the US, even like Fiji, unlike Swank brands, is tap water. Might be tap water for someone from somewhere. It has like naturally nice water, but it's tap water and it's poorly regulated, which means there could be all sorts of stuff in there that like you didn't bargain for him. If you can lean towards aluminum, Blake, go for it. And it's precisely because we have that like pretty tight locked down supply chain here locally. So for beverages that might be a fun option. Reasonable beverage bottles, I could wax romantic all day about those. I think they're great, super cute. Find one that speaks to you. You can get reasonable coloring in like these few little bags and kids. Now if that's something you're interested in, reusable shopping bags actually make a huge difference because we can talk about plastic bags all day, but they're still well, my God, my cat clogging. But it's still like a disposable item, right? And then being restrict about your recycling. Another thing that I heard recently that really struck me because I'm definitely guilty of this is if you've had a stressful day, like do a distress instead of buying a de-stress. So, you know, I get online and you're looking at stuff and be like, oh yeah, I bet it has something. And it's like no, I don't need all that junk. So instead now will do like one of those ten minute like stretchy yoga things online or I'll go for a walk. Or since we're all quarantine, kinda one of my cats, whether they like it or not. You can punch a pillow, guys. I'm not going to judge you now. Very cathartic. Do it. Sometimes. I'll just go down to the dog park and hang out, guys. I don't own a dog. And I would never never, you know, kidnap one of my neighbors, really cute dogs. But I'll go and if someone's like, hey, which togas yours zombie like that one over there. Sure. Here's a suit. You tell me about your dog, so that's, that's an option and you're saving money at the same time. And then, you know, if you really want to like dive down the rabbit hole, there's a lot of information out there just about kind of reducing the amount of trash waste, improving recycling, whatever it is. I encourage people to like to kind of take their own pace. You don't need to rush into it. If you're going to be like, OK, I just want to start using a reusable bag, like do that. It took me six months to make that a consistent habit. I made a whole lot of mistakes and then lock in it and be like, hey, good job. And then if you want to try something else, do it. If something sounds fun, try it doesn't, don't make it stressful because honestly and behavior change that. We know that that just doesn't work. People don't wanna do it. They're just not going to. If you want to like, really dive down there, I'm all and go big or go home, life, more power to get more for it. I didn't research a bunch of blogs because there's lots of people out there who want to convince you that there's like toxic click demons and products. And I don't know, I, I tend to lean towards a science guys, very science oriented. And the blog I have here is really well organized, comprehensive. There's a lot of resources for different levels. You don't have to like, go straight to like, you know, the, the super hardcore stuff. And more importantly, it's well-researched. It's not crazy and the lady seems pretty nice. Come on down every spring. Just do your ear like recycling dropoff every spring if you want to. You don't have to like be a student. Bring your shredded paper, et cetera, et cetera. We'll paint cans, you name it. And then if you find that you are stocking up on canned goods and then you actually get a parking ticket on campus, pay it off with those camp beds every fall. Man. Parking services accepts canned goods you around, but during the fall semester, anytime it helps pay off your tickets. So kinda doing doing good for your wallet, do good for the community. All of it goes to the feedback. So yeah. Here in finally, are shameless self-promotion. If you go to UDL such recycling, you will find the sustainability website. So we have all sorts of good stuff on there, including information about the sustainability council. And that's it. That's my presentation. I hope you enjoyed it. That was great. Michelle. I had no idea you could pay parking tickets off by treating canned goods. That's awesome. Now, I take, I mean, during normal times, I zoom around campus quite a bit to get to meetings and yeah, they they know my car. They're looking for a parking ticket. So I will actually like if cancer on sale, I'll actually by a couple extra and stockpile them and take them down there. Just to be like, hey guys, it's pay off some of those parking fines. So I don't think they're doing heavy enforcement right now. So if you have if you are happen to be on campus, like don't go crazy, but they are not looking so hard, so awesome. So we do have some questions here or one that has come up. This might be something that you could debunk for us, so to speak. But somebody's asked, does plastic actually get recycled in the US. I've heard recently that it is no longer cost effective to recycle plastic and that recycling plastic is only a myth perpetuated by the oil industry. I mean, short answer is kind of. So the oil industry, it's not perpetuating the myth of recycling if it can be and if you know those international commodity markets, if the winds of commodity markets are blowing in the right direction, yes, because it's cost effective, they're not, then it's less likely. There are a lot of companies who shall go unnamed, who have talked a big game on recycling, but have it looks like it's all green wash. So they haven't, for example, invested any of their money and recycling or they make products that are difficult to recycle because of their shape. So there are certainly companies that could do a lot more with how they design their products and supporting the recycling system. But yes, so because recycling is so decentralized in the US and because commodity markets, the wind blows, whichever way the wind is blowing, it's all supply and demand. Any given month out of the year or psych links might be hot and it might not. I will tell you that the local recycling center does their best to get it recycled. And that does depend heavily on how how well they can sort things, how wildly sort things depends on us. So what I tell people is we can't guarantee the things we put the recycle bin will get recycled. Like we're part of a chain. The chain has problems. We can't control what happens down the chain, right? But if you do your part and do your recycling, at least there's that chance blank, you're making your little bottle, given them a chance to maybe get recycled. It's not perfect. I wish it was better, but that's kind of where it's at. If you don't recycle at all, just throw everything into trash. You guarantee whenever get recycled, like full stop. So even if it's like 4% of like number three or whatever, I'm making that number up, plastics get recycled like four out of a 100 things you recycle, you, you toss in, the bin, will get recycled. So I wish I had a better story to tell you. It's not sexy, That's not inspiring. But that's, that's where we're at. Sorry guys. That's, that's good information to know though. These triad is u and end at the consumer level, it's trying to get less stuff that needs to be recycled. Where that's where that's appropriate for for you and your routine or in your budget, you know, don't go and spend a 100 bucks, Sun-like stuff. But, you know, just being just being a little more conscientious goes on much longer way than like agonizing whether or not the thing in your handle get recycled. Great. So kind of playing off of that. 12 questions actually, when you say number three and number four, does that mean in your little triangle circle, there's a number printed in there on your containers that what you're looking at. Okay. Yeah. So those are all different grades and qualities of plastic? I am not a chemist, so I don't you know, they roughly they're roughly equivalent to the lake quality isn't like high quality, low quality of the plastic. Technically all of them can be recycled. But the, the, the lower the number Sleep, Number one is the easiest and most valuable to recycle, and that's food grade plastic. So that's like your milk jugs, that's like your detergent bottles for like your clothes wash washing machine, clothing, laundry. I do occasionally speak English. So you know, that stuff is like the most valuable and that stuff gets recycled. You get down to like plastic bottles. And that's where like the value just, you know, Thursday might be good, Sunday might not be good. And it's like, you know, if, if if it's too expensive to ship it somewhere or to get it done, then. But there have been times in the past, like actually even pretty recently when the prices for this plastics were really high. And during that time we're cycling was great. Blah, blah. So some more questions here are actually out a bit popping up. Why? So you talked about the dark parking, talked about bags. How about **** bags? How what is the type of bags we should use? Should think, should we just flush it down the toilet? I don't know about you but I'm not Karen night in my house, but what were your thoughts? So I did have a house, so I don't personally have done which is why the dog purpose so attractive. So I had a house me, I used to run out an extra room and my housemates always had cute dogs. Like honestly, I judge the dogs were the house paid by the dog more than anything. And some of my housemates had bio-degradable dog bags that go in the trash, but it's not a plastic product. It's like potato plastic or something. They were more expensive but that was like their jazz. Like they were really into that item S-like their contribution to the environment or whatever. So if, if that makes sense for you, you can get them off like Amazon or the internet or from your local, like ask your local pet shop, et cetera, et cetera. That's great. Another thing I've seen is if you have a yard, you can get there called like doggy doo lease. And you buried in your yard and I think you put a little packet of like enzymes or something in there and basically you just shovel your your dog stuff in there. Draw on the packet like once a year and a compost sit down and they come in different sizes for different sizes and numbers of pets. I actually encountered one moving along one time and I thought I had like destroyed them. Our turns out this thing was started like, normally you can go over them because they're flat but like we opened it up, we didn't know what it was and it was just compost in there. Like, you know, we had to look up the name of the product because we didn't understand what we were looking at. It looked like just a little hole in the ground and there are some soil and narrowed. It turned out it was composted dog stuff, interests and that was called a dog do Lear. Yogi duly. Nice fell that because it's like no. But with the power of Google and con that we can all we can all find some kind of dug composting products. If if you have a yard or I don't have the yard, that would be amenable for that, which is why my housemates had their little potato plastic doggie bags. Perfects. Alright. Another question is, should we take the labels off of aluminum? Can? I don't think they I don't think they need you to take labels off of like soup cans, plastic bottles or any of that? I think I think the machines shred them. And in the shirting process, those get blown off by a sand or something. Not the metal, the plastic, the metal, but yeah, they don't they don't they don't need you to take labels off, so don't worry about that. Ok. Ok. Another one on my screen is needed clothes that okay. How do we manage, how do we better manage food? Angry seed paper like pizza boxes, toss it, has the rule of thumb. I like to tell people it's also a great way to get students to look up from their phones is if you would let a toddler play with the pizza box, you can recycle it. If it's too dirty for like a baby, then third away. Right now. And Sarah, that the spelling of the doggy duly out there for us, it's D, O, L E Y prefix of you looking for. Awesome. Thank you, sir. Alright. So another question. Back to the digesters. So like what is the benefits of turning like that food waste into sludge that go. Sewage, it doesn't really sound that good. Super great, right? There's a couple advantages. And actually we've done research on these things with ds WA, Delaware Solid Waste Authority to see what are the actual impacts on the sewer system? Because ds WAS like ligases polluting with sewer stream, which sounds counterintuitive, but it's actually a thing. So there's a couple benefits. One is when the guys working in the kitchens that says specifically the dish room where the dirty dishes come in, they take the food off. They don't have to load all the food waste. You know, pizza crust or whatever people aren't eating that day into a 60 gallon trash bin wheel that heavy been out to the dumpster outside. If it's like IC or grow sound like it becomes a health hazard, then they have to dump the thing. There's a machine that does that. So it's not like they're lifting it, but it eliminates some time and also some health and safety concerns out of their daily routine. So what happens now is they have a little like one gallon bucket. They fill it with food waste. They take it to this big metal box basically and they just dump it in. There's a hatch. They open the hatch, dumping in and close the hatch, they're done. That is a huge time and cost saver. And also, like I said, it, it reduces some health and safety. Risks, will say, from the environmental standpoint, we're not loading this heavy water. You know, all this food, even bread has a, has a pretty high water content. Water is heavy, you know, again to water costs eight pounds. So if you throw that someone's head like they need to duck, right? Because the loading that into a truck, driving that truck to the landfill, we pay per ton basically. So we pay to throw away water. And then driving back that all has like the maintenance fuel, man hours, et cetera, et cetera. So the fewer loads per truck that goes to the landfill, we save money. Well, if we're removing, say 4 thousand odd pounds a day from that truck like that. It's a quick So there's a cost-saving savings. And from the environmental standpoint, all the nutrients, all the, you know, footprints of water, agriculture, every, everything that made that food item is not being buried in like hermetically sealed landfill where it'll eventually become methane. It goes to the wastewater treatment plant where it is either scrubbed from the water stream or it returns the environment in some way. So basically what we're doing is taking the environmental footprint, whether that's nutrients, water, whatever it is of that thing, and keeping it in a moving system instead of trying to lock it away forever, where it becomes a potent greenhouse gas. So it's not a black and white issue. Some of those, some parts of that system, you know, could be pollution. They get treated, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's still kind of at the end of the day better than sending it to landfill. Sorry, authentic kind of convoluted answer. Now it's I think I'd answer it for a while. It's just kind of amazing to think about the things that go on for daily modern life to happen like these sewage waste treatments and all this studying. And some things that you don't really think of when you go about our daily lives. Yeah. If you want to, if anyone wants to experiment with composting at home, if you think of your compost as vegan, it's pretty straightforward. I have I compost at my house and basically I have a trash can buried in the ground that I just like throw stuff in there started occasionally, there's holes drilled in it. Whoops, awesome. It pretty much does its own thing, so awesome. So Mark, we got some more questions coming in. So I have one that is asking, is there a reliable source for FISA codes? There are recyclable in Delaware. Their website is not clear on plastic codes. I guess this isn't talking about the the numbers, right? Oh, yeah. So the good rule of thumb is they used to have it in there. And they had like a booklet you can download and then they give the booklet out at like community events. Sometimes I try to get my hands on as many as possible for Ag Day, but we're not doing events this year. And they would be the Delaware Solid Waste Authority is your result. I agree. I think they took the numbers out of the booklet because it is really confusing. The good rule of thumb is the lower that number, the, the easier it is to recycle and the more valuable it is to recycle because it's like a really long chain plastic and chemistry and stuff is my imperfect understanding of it. So number one, number two, number three is usually pretty solid in the recycling stream, you get to like 45. If, if you look at the bottom and there's the recycling symbol and like a question mark, you throw that sucker in the trash. And I don't think that anyone except like seven or eight because it's just like What if if you look at the pictures, let me see if I can go back. That's the sky. If you look at these dies, if we looked at the little number on the bottom of them, all of them would be like number one through three. So if you're looking at kind of these containers, Muslim containing food or household items, those are like your solid gold items. And they're also super common, right? But if you buy like say, a packet of batteries and they come with that little plastic bubble that's like just the special shape of the batteries, like throw that sucker out known concerned that it's it doesn't even have a number on it because it's like super sketch plastic. Super sketchy plastic. Yeah. That's a technical authors. So you did mentioned in the beginning about the sustainability council and that's made up of UD employees and students, is they're looking for members. How do you get involved in that or what's, what's the deal with that? So we just started, we started in the spring of our official launch was April for Earth Month. Also brand spanking new. And what we did is we recruited faculty and staff who'd been involved in a bunch of sustainability programming. But also like who had been helping us organize. We had a lot of folks who kind of allied and said, okay, well, let me talk to this dean or let me talk to the provost, et cetera, et cetera. And that was just to get us started. But within the first year, people are going to be cycling out because we want to set up a Like there are term limits on how long you can be on the council so we can keep it moving. And then also we want to stagger when people are coming and going. Because if everyone left like three or four years in and then we had to recruit a Honda council that would be disastrous. So what we're gonna do for recruitment is we will post on our council website and say, hey, we're looking for such and such. So starting like next semester, spring semester, like keep an eye out. If we're looking for like more than a couple people will put out a you daily article. And the same is true for subcommittees. So all of the horsepower on the council occurs in the subcommittees. So we have a subcommittee for light carbon neutrality, we have a subcommittee for sustainable landscaping. And we're going to create more S-like. Either topics become important or alternatively as we just need to like investigate a topic. So when we're recruiting for subcommittees, we don't require that people have like exceptional expertise in a topic. Just being really passionate about it is enough. And we'll be recruiting on that same website. We haven't figured out exactly what the recruitment processes, but like we're not going to ask for your resume. Like one or two questions just to kind of figure out like your level of interest and expertise. But like I said, we're not I mean, we'll invite a couple subject matter experts, but we really want the subcommittees to be where community members in on campus can get involved. And really the only requirement is that you're affiliated in some way with the university. So even alumni could be on a subcommittee. We do have requirements for attending meetings and blah, blah, blah. We try and keep the workload down as much as we can, but, you know, some of them will be like OK, review this document kind of thing. And then during meetings it's like OK, we've discussed this topic, debated it whenever we gotta make some decisions. And then usually the committee's give me homework because that's my full time job. And I go and prepare a report or do analysis or wherever and report back. And we do have a graduate fellow who helps out as well on it and who's actually super key to the whole process. That's great. So I kind of like I'm hopefully health and wellbeing as well being ambassadors. Maybe you can start with sustainability ambassadors at some point, you gotta be amazing. Yeah, yeah, we're working up towards that. So I am trying to set up like a green Office style program just to get more contact with faculty and staff on campus. And then also we have green lamps that's on hold due to the pandemic that would get us in some of the labs. And then of course, the Council, really the only thing limiting what we can do with the Council right now is like my personal bandwidth. So as SUE. So for example, if if we got a couple of people together and started like a, you know, community engagement subcommittee. Like basically I would delegate to them like, I need this Subcommittee to like run an ambassador program and I would be involved with it and they could like delegate tasks to me and be like Michelle, go do this thing. But like they would be like putting some of that time resource in as well. So that's, that's our shortest resource. If that money wasn't awesome. Alright, well, we answered all the questions. Fame I as any other last-minute questions, go ahead and throw it in the Q and a are in the chat there, which I probably should've mentioned prior, but it's so Michelle actually did touch a little bit upon what we are going to be discussing next week she mentioned home composting. So next week we have panelists that are going to be discussing composting and home gardening on our duties, extension is going to get it is extension is the master gardeners and master com posters their ego and they will be xi. Xi is just one girl that does that because both of them, Gail, we'll be discussing that. And then we also have a woman on who will be talking about pollination and bees and how important they could be to your garden and all that fun stuff. It's Asa and local honey and stuff. So Michelle, I'd like to thank you very much for taking time out to chat with us. There's suddenly there's a lot of work we still have left to do. By. Yet. At the same time, if you're doing just a little thing like using, you know, using those reusable bags and limiting plastic bags and just, you know, drinking more out of aluminum cans. Sounds like the better thing to that. Which is kind of interesting. You think glass glass bottles, they don't make too many of them anymore, but yeah, I mean, no glass panels are perfectly good. Actually the machine for glass that's really fun at the centre. So they sorted glasses easy to sort because it's very heavy and dance, right? And then they send it up this conveyor belt to a machine and all the machine does is like break glass all day and it's off. Basically simply the eight year old version of me. So I think that's my favorite machine, but yes, so the glass gets all shattered and then they send it off to another facility that sorts the colors and all that. And then they all go off to become whatever glass bottles become, frankly, probably more glass bottle bottle Hudson. Well, Michelle, thank you so much. Again. It's I believe it's what you del.edu slash sustainability or recycle or recycling at all. So the recycle, you can take you to our kind of waste page, but it's on the same website and you'll see the like, you know, menus and stuff at the top so you can explorer to your heart's content. Also. My my e-mail is on that page. So if you ever if anyone ever wants to just send me an email with a question or suggestion, Why don't we any of that stuff, like send it to me. I love that stuff, so awesome. So that's great. Thank you. So thank you so much for taking the time out and stay tuned for next week. So I've got Sustainability Series Part three. Right guys, have a great one. Thank you.
Sustainability Series: Reduce and Recycle
From Caitlin Tharp November 17, 2020
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