The University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, has made significant efforts to reduce its environmental impact on campus. University campus waste diversion is now an important part of their mandate. The university has pledged to be a zero-waste campus by 2050 and reduce its overall waste by 30%.
University Campus Waste Diversion Initiatives
- The furniture reuse programs offers used office furniture to staff and faculty.
- Providing a zero-waste dining hall by offering a reusable cup program, banning Styrofoam food packaging on campus, banning the sale of bottled water, and campus-wide composting of food, to name a few.
- The University’s Free Store recuperates usable items that may have been thrown into the landfill and redistributes and donates them to students and staff of the University.
- Recycling programs for textbooks, personal protective equipment and pen programs.
Moreover, facilities across the campus are replacing paper towel dispensers in campus restrooms with automatic hand dryers. This single effort will reduce annual paper consumption on campus by 9000 kg. It will also reduce the amount of plastic garbage bags and the time and cost of restocking and maintenance.
The University of Ottawa has implemented over 20 university campus waste diversion and recycling programs. This includes over 350 standardized recycling stations across campus with source-separated recycling and organic collection.
The University of Ottawa’s efforts in university campus waste diversion have paid off because the University of Ottawa claimed the top spot in waste diversion for large campuses in the North American Campus Race to Zero Waste. The University even ranked in the top 5 of all institutions for university campus waste diversion.
Since 2008, the University of Ottawa has been tracking the waste and recycling the University accumulates. This is done to increase the percentage of waste kept out of the landfill. Between January and April 2023, the University achieved a waste diversion rate of 60.941%. During this period, the University diverted 243 852kg of potential landfill waste.
One of their major successes is their organics collection. Their Dining Hall composts over 100 tonnes of organic waste per year, and their medical research labs compost 60 tonnes per year of animal bedding. And although they encourage students to bring their own coffee mugs, they also offer a coffee cup collection in many buildings, one of the most common sources of compost on campus.
Each semester, the University works closely with students in Community Service Learning placements to improve university campus waste diversion, such as recycling infrastructure, and develop new and innovative solutions for dealing with waste. One interesting strategy the University has taken is to remove desk-side waste and recycling bin services to improve waste management services and increase waste diversion rates. Doing so will reduce waste stream contamination, reduce plastic bag use, and encourage staff and students to use central recycling stations, offering more opportunities to divert waste and improve services.
The University of Ottawa is taking significant measures to reduce its impact on the environment, and its efforts are paying off. They are now leaders in waste diversion and are strong examples of what universities can and should be doing to reduce their waste on campus.
