Waste Reduction Tips

Food Waste

• Keep a reusable mug, plate, or silverware at your desk or in your office.  Use these items when purchasing drinks or food on campus
• Use a water filter and reusable bottles instead of buying bottled water
• Do not take a bag unless you need one
• Pack food that you bring from home in reusable containers
• Consider composting (visit composting page)

Packaging Waste

• Avoid buying products with excess packaging, especially plastic
• Do not buy/use polystyrene foam, since it never decomposes
• Request packaging be taken back by supplier upon delivery
• Request reduced packing by volume and weight
• Request reusable and refillable packaging
• Reuse and recycle boxes and packaging material
• When shopping, choose reusables over disposables

Office Paper Waste

• Perform a 'waste basket audit' to evaluate office recycling potential
• Purchase only the amount of supplies needed (letterhead, envelopes, business cards)
• Limit computer printouts, use electronic mail when possible to send business messages
• Review text on screen to limit mistakes on drafts
• Minimize colored, glossy, and special thickness papers since they are difficult to recycle
• Always use both sides of paper (when printing, scratch, memos, etc)
• Reuse waste paper for scrap, notes, calculations, etc.
• Scrap paper can be brought to University Printing where they cut the paper and bind into a notebook for you

Tips for a 'Green' Holiday Season

Each year, there are 2.65 billion holiday cards sold in the U.S.  This is enough to fill a football stadium field 10 stories high!

• Instead of buying all new wrapping paper, try using colorful pages from magazines to wrap small items, or newspapers for larger items
• Avoid wrapping paper entirely by using reusable decorative tins, baskets or boxes
• If you do buy new wrapping paper, make sure it is from recycled paper
• Reusable cloth ribbons can be used in place of plastic bows
• Unwrap gifts carefully and save wrappings for reuse next year

• Consider gifts with an environmental message such as a tree, nature book, battery recharger or a solar powered product.
• Consider homemade gifts such as cookies, bread, jam, plants, etc
• Consider gifts that do not create waste such as concert or movie tickets, dinner at a restaurant, etc
• When going shopping, bring your own tote ags to avoid coming home with extra plastic bags
• Recycle all holiday catalogs, mailings, etc that you receive during the holiday season

If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

See the following websites for additional holiday saving tips

Earth 911 Holiday Recycling

42 Ways to Trim your Waste

Green Gift Guide

Conservatree