WHERE DOES IT GO?an investigation and renovation of Terra’s waste disposal

TERRA 5

WHERE DOES IT GO?faculty & students are confused about what waste goes where &

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TERRA 5

TERRA RECYCLINGthe future of Terra’s waste disposal

Deng-Shun Chang dchang@uarts.eduAndy Grossman agrossman@uarts.eduMike Smith msmith004@uarts.edu

Students and faculty that spend time in Terra are confused and frustrated about Terra’s current waste disposal system. Ques-tions of where waste goes, how recycling is handled, and how students and faculty should be disposing of waste riddle the school community while clear answers are difficult to acquire.

Confusion in Terra

We first need to understand the nature of waste generation and collection on Terra’s 5th floor. Having suspended trash pickup on our floor for 72 hours, we were able to collect and study the waste our department gen-erates.

Hands-on Research

We recovered a significant amount of recyclables from the fifth floor. Assuming these re-sults are roughly scalable for the building, this experiment presents a strong argument for beginning a recycling system in Terra. 30% of Terra 5’s waste

was recyclable

Sorting Results

We recovered 36-pounds

of recyclable materials

The most fundamental change required is reconsidering the method of waste disposal used by Terra. Right now, Terra does not recycle any of its waste. One Gold Medal truck picks up all of the building’s waste at night and delivers it to a landfill in Chester, PA.

DisposalMethod

What needs to change?

Some UArts buildings have separate bins located in nearby lots. In these cases, Gold Medal collects the contents of each bin separately and processes them correctly.

Buildings that do not have nearby lots are unable to host bins. Terra is one of these build-ings. In Terra’s case, all of the building’s waste is collected by housekeeping and stored in the sub basement in a series of four rolling bins. When the Gold Medal truck arrives, the four bins are brought up to street level on the freight elevator and rolled out the front door to the street, where they are emptied into one truck. This truck pro-ceeds to pick up waste from other companies and eventually unloads its contents at a landfill in Chester, PA.

recycling

Buildings with bins have two truck system

Buildings without bins have only one truck

trash

trash

We have developed two ap-proaches to this problem at this time. One option would be to arrange for Gold Medal to send a recycling truck to Terra in the morning and continue to pick up the trash at night. Gold Med-al already picks up recycling from other buildings in the morning, so picking up Terra’s recycling would essentially be one more stop from Gold Med-al’s perspective. However, morn-ing traffic and other issues may prevent this from happening.

Another option is to have housekeeping transfer recycling from Terra to a nearby building that hosts a recycling bin.

Gold Medal Picks up recycling in morning, trash at night

Housekeeping transfers Terra recyclables to another building with recycling bin

New Disposal MethodTwo ideas

OR

recycling

trash

After speaking to Gold Medal about this issue, we discovered some issues they are dealing with that may affect how they operate with UArts.

Problem: New noise ordinance prohibits trucks from picking up trash from 9pm-7am.

Result:Gold Medal is getting ticketed by operating at night.

Problem: Customers are not allowed to leave

trash out on the street during the day.

Result:Customers are getting ticketed by

the Streets Department and are complaining to Gold Medal.

GOLDMEDAL

We realize that Gold Medal, as well as other disposal services, are in a tough spot right now. We are working with Mike Re-savage and Gold Medal to de-velop a solution to this problem that will benefit all parties in-volved.Problem:

New noise ordinance prohibits trucks from picking up trash from 9pm-7am.

Result:Gold Medal is getting ticketed by operating at night.

Problem: Customers are not allowed to leave

trash out on the street during the day.

Result:Customers are getting ticketed by

the Streets Department and are complaining to Gold Medal.

GOLDMEDAL

The housekeeping practices in Terra will also have to change in order to implement a recycling system.

DisposalMethod

What needs to change?

HousekeepingPractices

Right now, the housekeeping staff in Terra collects trash bags from each floor and combines them into one larger bag. These larger bags are brought down-stairs and are placed into any one of the four rolling bins lo-cated in the sub basement.

If Terra is to recycle, then the housekeeping staff must be re-sponsible for keeping trash sep-arate from recycling and storing them in separate bins. We plan to work with the housekeeping staff in Terra to develop a collec-tion system that is simple and convenient.

Keep it separate...

Commingled Recycling Trash

The students and faculty of Ter-ra will need to sort recyclables from trash in order to imple-ment an effective recycling sys-tem.

DisposalMethod

What needs to change?

HousekeepingPractices

Sorting

We propose to use a two bin system throughout Terra. By replacing most trash cans with a set of two bins (one for com-mingled recycling, one for trash), we hope to encourage sorting among students and faculty. We also designed labels that describe exactly what kinds of materials should be disposed of in each bin.

2 bin system in Terra BuildingPROTOTYPE PROPOSAL

This shows our floor’s current waste disposal system. Notice the variety of colors, shapes and size options (sometimes in the same room). All contents cur-rently go straight into the same collection truck, regardless of their composition.

BEFORE

One component of our proposal envisions signage at all bin sta-tions, clearly explaining what can be deposited in the bin be-low. Color coding (red for trash, blue for commingled waste) further streamlines this process.

AFTER

We constructed a prototype of an organizational structure that utilizes the bins we already have on the floor, thereby saving the school thousands of dollars in new bin costs. Our example uses text, color and shape to differentiate between trash and recycling.

Bin lid prototypePROTOTYPE PROPOSAL

Color codingShape associationStationary

Our prototype illustrates how clearly trash is delineated from commingled recycling: the blue commingled recycling side has a rubber “screen” which has cut-outs for cans, bottles and paper products. Optional color-coded signage can accompany the bins for further clarification of what can be disposed of prop-erly.

We realize that change does not happen overnight and that our prototype will need to be refined over time to work effec-tively, but we are ready to begin a recycling system in Terra. To begin this system, three major changes must take place. First, a recycling disposal method for Terra must be worked out with Gold Medal. We are working with Mike Resavage to develop a solution to this problem. Once that is resolved, a new sorting system can be implemented in Terra and the housekeeping staff can then be informed of and trained in new collection procedures.

The Next Steps:

HousekeepingPractices

New collection policies

DisposalMethod

Discuss with Gold Medal

Sorting

New Bins