College of Charleston's

Campus Sustainability

 

What techniques were implemented?

What were the results?
       Energy use
       Waste reduction

Who was involved?

 

 
There are now recycling bins for paper,
plastic, glass and cans
on the first and second floors in 114 Wentworth.


As a first step to reducing waste at the College of Charleston and maximizing success of recycling programs, this project hopes to implement a waste reduction program in the Green Building site. We hope to increase availability of recycling and minimize waste that travels through this building daily.


In late April we conducted a Waste Audit, collecting and sorting three days worth of the building’s trash. Using this data, we have an average daily volume of waste, and approximate percentages of recyclable materials in that waste. Later we can use this baseline data to measure the success of waste reduction techniques.

Volume of trash in Cubic feet over 3 days
Results of the Trash Audit
  • The Department of Political Science Building generates about 10 lbs of garbage per day, and approximately 80% of that by weight is recyclable in Charleston County.
  • That amounts to about 2.34 cubic feet of garbage, about 72% of which is recyclable by volume.
    If these numbers are consistent, the building produces about 3600 lbs and 854 cubic feet of waste in one year.
  • If All Recyclable Materials from this building were recycled, only 720 lbs of trash would be thrown away, leaving 2880 lbs of material to be converted into usable forms.