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!