Background: The Waste Audit Team is made of 5 UC Berkeley students dedicated to decreasing the amount of waste produced on campus. The members are Hanna Miller, Chika Kondo, Brenly Stapley, John Ezaki, and Leela McDowell. They collect the waste from buildings, sort through it, and then report back on the findings, providing suggestions on how to reach the goal of zero waste. This project was started from the desire to create a uniform waste audit protocol so the data generated by different groups can be compared and relied upon because of consistency in procedure. It is funded by The Green Process: • The team organizes an audit with buildings on campus. • The landfill waste is collected and a multiple day audit is performed to get a full picture of what the buildings waste composition is. • The waste is sorted into 6 categories: Landfill; Mixed paper; Cardboard; Compost; Metal and Glass; All Plastic. • All Plastic is further broken down into the plastic number categories with the help of the TGIF funded Zero Waste Research Center. • The team goes through the waste, weighing out the amounts found in each category. • Common items found in the waste for a building are documented with pictures and notes
Initiative Fund.
Total Waste Sorted 2012-2013 Carboard 3%
Metal and Glass 4% Mixed Paper 7% Landfill 13%
Compost 41%
All Plastic 32%
This chart is of the total amount of waste sorted into each category from all of the buildings audited from August 2-12 until March 2013.
Implementation: After the audit is finished, the team meets with the building manager to discuss ways to overall reduce the amount of materials that end up in the landfill.
Buildings Audited 2012-2013 (In pounds) California Haas Wurster Stanley Category Crossroads Hall Pavilion Hall Hall Cardboard 4 53 10 26 38 Metal and 7 21 23 64 36 Glass Mixed 2 11 76 133 31 Paper Landfill 13 72 21 150 231
Total
Percentage
131
3%
151
4%
253
7%
487
13%
All Plastic
38.5
55
132
341
660.5
1227
32%
Compost
64
156
217
789
339
1565
41%
Total
128.5
368
479
1503
1335.5
3814
100%
These are the buildings audited between August 2012 and March 2013. The numbers shown are given in pounds for all of the categories sorted into. The percentages given on the right are for the total amount of each category in the overall waste sorted through.