March 29, 2024

 

By DREW LOGAN

Here’s some trashy news: Conestoga’s recycling stream bins don’t actually work. That’s because students don’t sort their trash properly, resulting in the recycling bins becoming contaminated.

To bring attention to this problem, a day’s worth of garbage and organics will be dumped in the Atrium, as part of Conestoga’s Green Week, which starts March 26.

The garbage will be from classrooms and lunchrooms around campus and there will be a lot of it.

It will include items that shouldn’t be there, since students don’t properly dispose of their cans, bottles and papers, said environmental co-ordinator Jana Vodicka.

The stream bins, which were placed in every classroom, were put there to make recycling easier.

But this hasn’t been happening due to students not recognizing that improper use of the bins results in all its contents becoming garbage.

“We don’t sort it all out at the end of the day. As soon as one wrong piece is put in a bin, the whole container is tainted and it is disposed of like normal trash,” said Vodicka.

Conestoga has a waste diversion target of 60 per cent, and as of March 2, Conestoga has reached 53 per cent.

“Hopefully by the end of this month we will have reached our goal of an additional seven per cent to our waste division target,” she said.

One of the reasons for the live waste audit is to increase awareness and educate on improving our current behaviours.

“This could be disgusting, but it will definitely get people to look at what was going on,” said second-year computer engineering technology student Jordan O’Brien.

Zoey Ross, Conestoga Students Inc.’s director of sustainability, said, “We will be having events taking place all week. Monday will be waste day, Tuesday we’ll have Aboriginal Services speaking for Green Week.
“Friday we’ll have guest speakers.”

So, the garbage dump, called the live waste audit, will be just one of many events being held during Green Week.