Help UIC rethink its waste

In celebration of America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, the UIC Office of Sustainability will conduct a campus waste audit — and volunteers are needed.

The waste audit, Nov. 11-15, will help the UIC community rethink, redesign, reduce, reuse and recycle its waste. Volunteers can sign up to lend a hand.

Material from 15 campus facilities will be sorted into 20 categories, then weighed and tracked for the waste audit component of UIC’s Waste Characterization Study.

“Waste audits are like anthropology: a study of human activity. We can see and adapt to the changes that are happening in human behavior around waste and recycling,” said Joe Iosbaker, recycling coordinator for UIC’s Office of Sustainability.

The audit helps determine what campus waste consists of in order to initiate positive change on campus.

“We audited the UI Hospital in 2015 and found so many plastic water bottles. In 2017, we audited the hospital again and found almost no water bottles because the administration had installed so many water refilling stations, that they had affected the staff culture,” Iosbaker said.

For more information, visit http://sustainability.uic.edu