Future Work

Last RE-cycling post (for now)

I have been writing this blog for the last 3.5 months as coursework of the Global Environmental Change module. This is part of the University College of London “Climate Change” MSc.

During these months I tried to talk about recycling and, more generically, about waste management. I decide to organize the work starting from some background concepts related to the typology, quantity and methods to dispose the waste we produce (Digging the topic 1, 2 & 3). Other important group of posts is aimed to understand the role and importance of the recycling process: following the Waste Hierarchy, I explained why recycling (together with Reuse and Reduce), represents the best disposal method to treat the waste (Recycling: yes or not? 1,2,3,4 & 5).

In between, I gave space to some news (as source I mainly used “the Guardian” website and Adam Vaughan pieces of writing) and some extra links and initiative (“America Recycles Day” or the “Guardian Big Energy Debate”).

Moreover, I dedicated few posts to the recycling process and facilities within our University: I wrote about initiatives like the “Christmas Switch Off” or, simply, about the new recycling 3-stream-bins and relative signs. Importantly, I had the luck to meet the Green UCL staff. We had a wonderful chat about several UCL-recycling-topics like quantity of waste produced, recycling ratio, new 3-stream-bins, quality of recycled, WARPit & Junk in the Trunk projects and about the way to improve the recycling results.

I think that the best way to conclude is by writing what a list of future topics would be. In a blogger style, I am keen to highlight here an hypothetical future posts schedule:

1. Costs of recycling

2. Recycling and waste management in developing countries

3. Psychology and people behaviour/approach

4. Reuse and Reduce: some practical examples

5. Recycling and waste management in London

6. A day in a landfill site

7. Interviews

8. Updates about news and events about recycling and waste

9. Updates about Green UCL activities

….and thanks everyone for reading this blog!

Recycling@UCL

A chat with...

Hi again everyone!

Today is time for the second to last post on RE-cyling. I will go straight to the point.

Thursday afternoon I had a great chat with the Green UCL staff. Obviously, the topic of the day has been the recycling at UCL and related issued. First of all I wish to begin with an apology because, personally, it will not be easy to summarize one-hour chat in just a brief post. Anyway, the conversation touched upon several topics and I decided to list them as following.

1. UCL waste production and recycling ratio

The most updated data are referred to the 2012/2013 Green UCL annual report: 3.672 tonnes of waste produced (roughly 3 Big Ben full of waste) and a recycling ratio of 69%. Very interesting is what Tony Overbury (Green UCL Waste and Resources Sustainability Manager) said about the recycling ratio: “we are probably forecasting a decrease for this year because we are focusing more on the quality of the recycled material rather that the quantity […] we are working to give the recovery facilities better quality materials”.

2. What the way to recycle better material is

“The best way to improve the quality is to reduce the contamination that would make the recycled difficult or impossible to use”, Mr. Miles says. Moreover, he explained that food waste is the principal source of waste contamination as well as other materials that cannot be recycled as, for instance, polystyrene. Within this context lies the idea to install the new UCL recycling method: indeed, in August 2014, a large number of new 3-stream-bins (figure 1) were placed throughout UCL. This new system allows separating food waste and non-recyclable material from the waste that can be highly recycled (essentially dry and clean plastic, paper and glass).

Furthermore, Mr. Anton pointed out also the importance of having strong infrastructures, facilities of do separation of materials and being able to communicate in the simplest way possible: this is to provide people the right condition to “use” properly their rubbish.

Figure 1: one of the new UCL 3-stream-bin

3. Make people aware of the second-lives of waste

Surely, the most immediate thought refers to the fact that from recycled waste can be produced new materials which need less energy demand and allows a remarkable save in terms of virgin materials. Generalising this concept, we need to have clear that disposing properly our waste produces an effective economical gain. Speaking of which, Tony Overbury says “when you have to put something in the bin, what if that something is a 5 pounds note?” Finally, the conversation moved to the WARPit project, which consists in a website where university employees can sell unwanted furnishing rather that simply throw them away: in 2012/2013 WARPit allowed reusing 1.9 tonnes of materials, with a money saving of 31.000 pounds. Alex Green, Green UCL Stakeholder and Communication Coordinator, explained that there is also a student version called Junk in the Trunk, mainly aimed to that students that, at the end of their university path, return in their own country (thanks to this program 4 tonnes of materials have been reused in 2013).

4. Psychological work behind behaviour change

The last part of the chat went through the psychology behind the recycling/non-recycling approach of people. Understanding the behaviour and the psychological implication that run below a specific approach, could lead to an extremely important area of improvement.

Of course, the chat analyzed other aspects and involved quite a lot of other considerations and comments. I tried to summarize the key point in a reasonable and simple way. I wish to thanks Tony, Miles, Anton and Alex for their time and enthusiasm.

Finally, I decided to put here these two pictures (shot throughout the university) just to highlight the overall sustainable approach of UCL, focused not only on waste but also dedicated to energy and water save.

Considering again waste, the picture below is a further great example of the strong link between reusing, waste prevention and money: in every UCL cafe, it is possible to get 10p discount if using our own mug. Could you imagine how much waste could be potentially prevented??

Tomorrow there will be time for the final short post which will be dealing with the future work that would need to be done in RE-cycling.

See you tomorrow on RE-cycling!

Where are we?

Sketch and videos

Before posting the last posts, I thought it was nice and useful to make a (very rough) schematic outline of the blog. Just in case you lost yourself.

Moreover, you can find a few nice and simple videos that show how the recycling process takes place. At the same time, they summarize some of the concepts that I have explained in these few months (source: Recycle Now).

That's all, enjoy!

Video 1: Cans
Video 2: Food waste
Video 3: Paper
Video 4: Plastic bottles
Video 5: Glass bottles

See you soon on RE-cycling!