Cornell’s annual Beyond Waste Campaign, which spanned from Feb. 14 to March 31 this year, is an initiative run by the Campus Sustainability Office that aims to create awareness, action and community around waste use and management. The campaign included participation in the national Campus Race to Zero Waste competition and featured events from faculty, student clubs like Residential Compost Management and Cornell alumni. The events included speakers like the Hatfield lecture with Marriott CEO Tony Capuano, gallery exhibitions on sustainable fashion and training on sustainable leadership and how to certify an event as sustainable.
Campus Race to Zero Waste began in 2001 as Recylemania, a competition between Ohio University and Miami University that utilized the schools’ intense sports rivalry to incentivize students to see who could recycle the most. Cornell joined in 2010, and in the following 13 years the competition has expanded beyond recycling to include other categories such as food organics, waste minimization, targeted materials and diversion and electronics recycling.
The competition’s goal is to reduce waste to zero on college campuses by diverting at least 90 percent of waste from becoming trash through upcycling, recycling, composting, donations and resale. In 2020, the national campaign was renamed the Campus Waste to Zero Waste. Over the eight-week period, Cornell — among other schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Macalester and University of Ottawa — reported its waste and competed in each category. Cornell has historically performed well in the competition. In 2022, the University came first in electronics waste recycling, third for food waste diversion and 25th for landfill diversion. This year, Mark Hall — materials coordinator for Cornell’s recycling and waste repurposing center, R5 — said that Cornell came in 28th out of 89 in landfill diversion, 35th out of 101 for the Per Capita Classic and 12th out of 82 for food organics.