We’d like to introduce you to our Senior Advisor, Alec Cooley! Okay, you have probably seen Alec around here before. In fact, if you’ve spent any time with our blogs and webinars, you already know Alec – he’s the writer behind the Advancing Recycling blog series, and the program creator & moderator for our Green Thinking webinar series. What you may not know is that Alec also does a bundle of invaluable behind-the-scenes work at Busch Systems – and since his position is so unique in the manufacturing…

As we gear up for a return to school, we wanted to share this guest post written by student & environment-advocate, Gabe Vargas. ***** “It’s no secret that cars are an important tool in our modern society. They take us to work, home, and school. They let us go where we want to go, whenever we want. However, they also take a huge toll on our planet. In order to lessen the burden for Mother Nature, the ideal choice is to get rid of our personal…

Don’t miss part 1 of this blog series! I recall having a conversation with Jay Price, at the time the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s recycling manager, and who now oversees all sustainability initiatives. It was following a session about mini-bin deskside programs at the 2015 AASHE conference in Minneapolis, and Jay was actively focused on how to bring such a program to his campus. Flash forward to July 2020, the 30,000 FTE university has converted nearly 90% of campus to the My Tiny Trash system,…

Change comes slowly for most college and university waste reduction programs. Over time, layers of recycling, compost, and reuse collections are grafted onto a waste management system that otherwise remains unchanged. Institutional inertia, finite budgets, and the perception of recycling as a nice-but-not-essential operation conspire to keep trash the more convenient, default option in many situations. Trash bins are ubiquitous while the network of recycling bins only expands as grants or one-time funding becomes available. Housekeepers empty deskside waste baskets while staff and faculty are…