Harvard University recycles, reuses, or composts more than half its waste, but officials readily concede there is room to further reduce the more than 6,300 tons the University sends to landfills each year. According to the Harvard Gazette, improved composting will be one of the primary methods of reducing waste.
Although Harvard’s recycling and reuse rate stands at about 55 percent, a recent audit, in which 50 bags of trash collected in Harvard Yard were torn open and inspected, showed 41 percent could have been recycled, another 38 percent could have been composted, and 4 percent could have been reused. Just 18 percent should have been shipped to the landfill according to current policies.
According to Rob Gogan, associate manager of recycling services in Harvard’s University Operations Services, the biggest trend in recycling has been the increase of composting. Food, landscaping, and other organic waste is gathered, broken down, and trucked to nearby farms to be used as fertilizer. Harvard’s switch to single-stream recycling has aided the move to composting, Gogan said, by allowing recyclables to be gathered in one container instead of two, freeing up room for a composting container.