A plastic bottle cap sculpture, jeopardy games and a blind taste test of water were all part of the efforts of student organizations on the Brickyard Wednesday to reduce the 4,452 tons of annual landfill waste produced by N.C. State.
N.C. State’s Sustainability office and Waste Reduction and Recycling office held America Recycles Day, a recycling campaign emphasizing waste reduction on the Brickyard, in honor of “Zero Waste” month. The event at N.C. State correlated with a national effort to raise awareness to and promote recycling each year on Nov. 15.
“As a campus, we strive to have the most sustainable materials we can,” said Carla Davis, communications coordinator for N.C. State’s Sustainability Office. “Our goal is to educate students about the importance of daily recycling and its social, environmental, and economic benefits.”
Different student organizations including Wolfpack Environmental Student Association, the EcoVillage and Splash H2O gathered on the Brickyard to inform students about the importance of recycling.
Robert Hicks, a sophomore in biochemistry and member of WESA, helped glue plastic bottle caps to the side of a wolf-shaped statue designed and made by students.
Hicks said that all of the plastic bottles used to compose the statue came from a collection of more than 20,000 gathered after one football game this season.
“We’re trying to bring awareness to the amount of plastic we use,” Hicks said. “It shouldn’t be okay for us to use a plastic bottle once and throw it away,” Hicks said. “That plastic will stay in the ground longer than we do.”
Members of the EcoVillage also emphasized plastic waste by having students blindly taste Dasani bottled water and tap water to see which one tasted the best.
Vanessa Luthringer, a freshman in First Year College, said that most students surveyed preferred the taste of the tap water.
“We’re trying to further the point that you can save plastic and still have good water,” Luthringer said.
Bridget Lassiter, a crop science professor at N.C. State and self-proclaimed dumpster diver, presented some of the items she found in dumpsters in Raleigh, including new headphones, vitamins, pens and body lotion.
“When I find a dumpster full of new merchandise, I ask myself, ‘how wasteful can we really be?’” Lassiter said. “There is a lot going to waste that could be recycled, and it makes me angry that the public doesn’t know.”
N.C. State’s Waste Reduction and Recycling office, which offered a recycling jeopardy game for students, aims to reduce the amount of waste produced on campus.
Through the WRR office, the WE Recycle program collects and recycles water bottles at all home football games. Last year, the program collected 58,400 pounds of bottles, and it is already on pace to surpass that number this season, with 85,480 pounds collected so far.
Through these recycling efforts, N.C. State’s annual sustainability report for the last fiscal year showed that 45 percent of waste produced was diverted from the landfill through reusing, recycling and composting. The University goal is to increase that number to 65 percent.
Lauren McKinnis, the outreach coordinator for the WRR office, encouraged students to fill out a survey about their recycling efforts on campus so that the office can gain insight on improving sustainability at N.C. State.
“We want to find out where and why students are recycling, whether it’s convenient or because their friends are,” McKinnis said.
Any student who completes the recycling survey by Nov. 22 is eligible to win two free tickets to the N.C. State football game vs. Maryland on Saturday, Nov. 30. Students can go to recycling.ncsu.edu to complete the survey.
