The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry is pledging to be a plastic-free campus by 2025. To fully implement the pledge, the college must maintain its zero-waste task force, eliminate all non-essential, non-compostable, single-use disposable plastics with readily available alternatives.
A grassroots, student-led movement began years ago at ESF with five-gallon buckets that could be found scattered across campus with handwritten notes encouraging people to deposit compostable waste. Those buckets have been replaced with a campus-wide composting and recycling program.
A number of changes have already been made at the school’s popular Trailhead Cafe located in the SUNY ESF Gateway Center. Right now the cafe turns about one-fourth trash and three fourths compostable items. The plan is to be fully compostable by next semester.
ESF Sustainable Facilities Manager Sue Fassler says, “Some of the compostable stuff looks so much like plastic that people still think it should go in the trash so that’s where education and outreach and help from our students is really, really important.”
The college has replaced every corridor bin with centrally located and consistently designed and labeled trash, recycling and composting bins. These bins can be found on every floor of every building. Office trash bins have been replaced with 1.15-gallon liner-less mini bins and office trash pick-up schedules have been altered.
“So this never has a plastic liner, that immediately saved us 25,000 plastic bags a year and this gets picked up by custodial staff once a week and you’ll notice since there’s no liner it’s also not being cleaned so people have to bring their compostable stuff to the hall,” Fassler adds.