STUdents look into a waste free future
An Environmental praxis class has been working on waste management projects to make St. Thomas University a little more waste free.
Canadians produce approximately 31 million tonnes of garbage a year, according to crcresearch.org, and the students at St Thomas want to do their part in lowering their waste contribution.
On Thursday the class, with their five projects, set up in James Dunn hall to explain their findings. Divest STU,My kitchen, Zero Waste, E-Waste, and Weigh Your Wastewere the projects presented.
“Our Intro to Environmental Praxis class, [are holding] a fair to showcase our projects we have been working on throughout the semester. So, we have all different areas of the environment being represented today” said student Grace Hickey.
The project Weigh your Waste was one of the projects that interacted with the students the most.
Twice a week, for a month, project partners for weigh your waste set up two plastic see through buckets at lunch time for students to throw their leftovers in. Around two o’clock they would weigh each bucket to see how much food was going to waste.
The point of the project was, a lot of biodegradable food was being thrown into the garbage that could be composted. So, they wanted to get an understanding of how much was going to waste, and get composting bins for left overs.
“We have found that the results are staggering from 11:30-2:30, twice a week, we went in and weighed the waste, and we found that on average 30 pounds of food was being wasted during this time,” said Hickey.
Hickey also said it was to get students to think about if they were taking more food than they needed. By being a visible form of waste, students were not taking as much food and wasting it.
Most of the projects presenters have spoken to administration to try to get things changed. Kelly Green another student from the class was a member of the “Zero Waste” project, she said her group finds it hard to schedule meetings.
“It’s been a little hard to get meetings with the administration, but we’ve been pushing for it and they are really interested in reducing their waste, so I think their warming up to it a lot more,” said Green.
Hickeys group has already had meetings and says “I hope that through these meetings and through the awareness we’ve been creating with our project that we will start to see some changes going forward”
Each project hopes to get St. Thomas on the right track with their waste but a lot of work has to be done according to Hickey.
“I definitely see a shift in people talking about it, there’s more awareness, there are a lot of groups on campus really advocating for composting. So, I feel that it is a very attainable goal within the next year or so,” said Hickey.
Hickey hopes her project gets St. Thomas to change the buffet style serving, which she says wastes food, and invests in composting bins since most of the food is natural, and can be composted. If they do this she believes they will cut down on their waste.
The visual representations of the waste being produced has defiantly made students talk about how the university and they themselves can cut down their waste. With the physical demonstrations of the waste the class hopes to get students talking about their waste at home and at school. With the goal in mind to reduce their garbage as much as they can.
