By Chloe O’Brien ’17, Sustainability Intern

On Friday, November 7th, Champlain held its sixth annual Trash Bash in the Fireside Lounge. We sorted through trash gathered from the IDX Center, Hauke, and the Halfway Café, and found that, by weight, ONLY 51.71% of it was trash! The remainder of our sample was 31.6% compostables, 10.9% recyclables, 4.4% coffee cups, and .23% e-waste.

This showed an improvement from last year, but we’ve still got a ways to go to get to our goal of having 100% trash in our bins.

Why is this so important? Many people don’t know that trash is nearly four times more expensive than recycling, and two times more expensive than composting. With all of the compost/trash/recycling receptacles around campus, why WOULDN’T we place our waste in the proper bins? In doing so, we are helping the environment AND saving money.

Try to be mindful in where you discard your waste; take that extra step in composting your leftover soda before you recycle the bottle. Help us make next year 100% trash in the trash bins!