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Dominika Szal carries on the waste survey work that Syd Trimble began

Posted by Naveen Baarla on March 4, 2022

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  1. Syd Trimble and Dominika Szal began efforts to create a comprehensive waste management survey to dissmeninate to all Big Ten and Friends affiliated insitutitons. With the results in hand, they would collate and summarize the data, and give back the analysis to each of the schools for their benefit. The purpose was to benchmark schools against one another and determine the highlights and opportunities for improvement at each school.
  2. Draft of the initial survey:
    1. I saw that your school has a goal of achieving a [insert % waste diversion by whatever year]. Why did your school decide to work on reducing your waste production in the first place?
      1. What year was the goal initially decided? (what is your benchmark year?)
      2. What was the waste diversion rate of your benchmark year?
      3. Why did you decide on this rate as a goal?
      4. If you accomplish your goal by [desired year], would you then work on maintaining that waste diversion rate or would you work on diverting even more waste?
      5. What waste goal metrics do you track?
      6. What do you include in your waste diversion rate?
    2. What are the most common challenges you face when attempting to reach waste reduction goals?
      1. How did you identify your next course of action to deal with these challenges?
    3. Which initiatives would you say were the most effective in reaching your goals for waste reduction?
    4. Do you provide your own recycling or waste collection services or is it outsourced?
    5. How is recycling funded?
      1. Do you sell your collected recyclables?
        1. How is that revenue used?
    6. How is waste disposal funded?
    7. How important is investing in public education about recycling/waste reduction?
      1. How do you get the word out about recycling or any initiatives you have going on
      2. Have you noticed which types of marketing tend to be more receptive by certain demographics (such as students or faculty?)
      3. Does your institution have any training for students and/or faculty for them to be more aware of recycling?
      4. What are ongoing initiatives that your institution is developing? (ex. recycling app, recyclopedia)
    8. With football games, we typically see a lot of waste, whether it’s from tailgating or the game itself. What has your institution done to effectively increase recycling/reduce waste at these events? If you haven’t done so yet, are there any plans in the works?
      1. Do you work directly with the concessionaire?
      2. Who works as the liaison with Athletics? Do you have a sustainability specialist working within Athletics?
      3. How do you get enough volunteers to help with achieving your waste reduction goals at the games?
      4. What would you say helped the most with increasing recycling rates during football games?
    9. Do you have any specialty recycling initiatives? Some examples of specialty recycling include batteries, PPE, glasses recycling, or phone recycling.
    10. Question related to procurement goals (look up “sustainable leadership purchasing council”)
      1. Do you currently have a sustainable procurement policy in place?
        1. If no, is your institution pursuing a sustainable procurement policy?
      2. Were there any challenges that arose while developing this policy?
    11. Does your institution address e-waste, whether through re-use (ex. a surplus store) or donation?

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