Sustainability

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Recycling and waste management

UCR sends roughly 2,500 tons of refuse to landfills annually. In March 2009 the university selected Athens Services, Inc. to be its new recycling vendor. The company is charged with implementing a new comprehensive waste and recycling program that will reinvent the campus’s diversion programs and collection infrastructure. The university will also start diverting food waste, which currently mixes with general refuse. Goals for food waste diversion are reproduced in this section as well as the Food focus area.

To further enhance existing recycling efforts, the university is submitting a Beverage Container Recycling Grant proposal to the California Department of Conservation in spring 2009. The potential funds awarded through this grant would provide the crucial financial support UCR
requires to implement a campuswide cans and bottles recycling program.
 

Short Term Goals

1. Develop a written comprehensive recycling and waste management plan
2. Develop a marketing program for the recycling and waste management plan
3. Implement uniform outdoor cluster recycling
4. Create a recycling webpage as part of the larger UCR sustainability website
5. Adopt the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Recycling Measurement tool
6. Develop a construction waste management plan
7. Require all new construction and renovation projects to divert at least 75 percent of waste from landfill disposal
8. Create a construction and demolition material hauler/processor database
9. Create a battery recycling program
10. Divert 25 percent of food waste
11. Achieve a 50 percent waste diversion rate by FY08/09

Intermediate Goals

1. Work with vendors to reduce unnecessary packaging
2. Perform waste audits for five buildings
3. Provide support for zero waste events
4. Establish a toner cartridge take-back program
5. Divert 90 percent of construction waste
6. Divert 75 percent of food waste
7. Achieve a 75 percent waste diversion rate by FY11/12

Long Term Goals

1. Require all events to be zero waste
2. Divert 100 percent of construction waste
3. Divert 100 percent of food waste
4. Achieve zero waste by 2020