1B Campus Waste Audit 1

WASTE AUDIT

First review 1D NEED TO KNOW Plastic and Recycling to better understand what you will measure.

OPTIONS
Conducting a full campus waste audit is a large task.  While informative, it may be more practical for a smaller EcoTeam to gather a more limited amount of information to document the plastic waste situation.

Therefore, there are three options to consider when making the audit:

1.          FULL – includes items used by students directly and indirectly, e.g. by the kitchen
2.          MEDIUM – includes only items used by students directly
3.          LIGHT – limited to only a few high profile items, e.g. PET water bottles
   

HOW TO COUNT
What is needed is a reasonably accurate “snapshot” of the waste on campus on an average day.  While it is possible to survey the waste for a week and divide to get an accurate average, a good one-day sample can be good enough.  When the audit is re-done at the end of the project there should be a significant difference in the plastic waste generated within the school community.

WHAT TO COUNT
The primary goal is to find out how much plastic waste the school community is generating.  Later modules will get into recycling and so it is useful to use the audit to understand the volumes of non-plastic waste being generated; aluminium, paper, etc.

HOW TO MEASURE
There are several standard ways to measure but it is important to use the same unit of measure for each survey.  Here are some options:

•       Individual Units – count each bottle, cup or other item – this means going through the trash – wear gloves of course and be careful of broken glass and sharp items
•       Average Units – count the individual items in a sample of bags of waste to get an average per bag then count the number of bags and multiply by the average of items per bag
•       Estimated Units – without counting individual units, look in a number of sample bags to estimate the number of different individual items per bag.  Multiply by the number of bags

WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

INTERNAL: purchased by the school and generally found in the cafeteria, vending machines and other places.

EXTERNAL: brought in by students and faculty.

PREPARE TO AUDIT
-       Get permission from the school administration to conduct the audit
-       Get enough volunteers
-       Make sure you can get access to the areas to be audited
-       Consider health and safety – heavy gloves, etc.
-       When is the best day/time to conduct the audit so that it is representative

 COMMUNICATE
Using social media, school radio, newsletter or other, share the results and their meaning with the school community.  Add photographs, videos, etc.

Use an app like Litterati to track your on-campus waste data.

TYPES OF PLASTIC

For more information on composite packages like Tetrapack see:
Treading My Own Path
Earth 911

FULL
METHOD USED:  □ Individual Units      □ Average Units      □  Estimated Units 

MEDIUM
METHOD USED:  □ Individual Units       □ Average Units        □ Estimated Units

LIGHT
To do this, select one or a few types of single-use plastics that are most obvious as a target for reduction.  Often this is either PET Water Bottles or single-use plastic cutlery.  Choose what is right for your school.

Because of the limited audit the best way to do this is the Individual Units method.

METHOD USED:  □ Individual Units