Who are we? What is Source Reduction anyway?
Unbeknownst to most people, recycling is not the only method we can use to address the problem of waste. Do you know the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle"? The first part is what Source Reduction is all about. By helping the college use fewer resources we can reduce the size of its ecological footprint Hopefully in the process the college will become more efficient in its use of resources, and we will all become more aware of our footprint and less wasteful.
There are three R's of garbage: reduce, re-use, and recycle.
- Source reduction is an effort to reduce the amount of waste we create before it is created. We can't recycle everything, and the process of recycling still uses energy and creates waste byproducts.
- Source reduction can be done on individual and institutional levels. It involves using less paper, energy, water, consumer goods and any other resources. It can involve composting, using local goods so that getting the product to the consumer consumes less resources (through packaging, preservatives, and transportation), and other projects.
Ideally, source reduction simplifies life so that people consume less stuff and obtain goods by creating new from the old. There are lots of creative ways to reuse and reduce to create less waste, save money and preserve resources for the future generations.
History of the OC Source Reduction Program
During the 1996-97 school year Citizen's Policy Center, based in Akron, received a grant from the Cleveland Foundation to start Source Reduction programs on college and university campuses nearby. They approached Oberlin College and the first stage of the program was set up. Through meetings during that year 2 students were hired to work on source reduction in the 1997-8 school year, and the program took off from there. Cheryl Wolfe in the Environmental Health and Safety office had been supervising the recycling assistants and agreed to help supervise the source reduction interns.
Since then, the Source Reduction interns and the Recyclers have effectively merged, in a recognition of the fact that recycling and source reduction are intertwined. Read our mission statement! Learn how to scavenge (source reduction at its best)! Browse source reduction links!
Back to the Top
Projects Past and Present
Oberlin Shorts was begun in 1996 as a way to cut down on all-campus mailings, and the Recyclers are working on other ways to reduce campus paper use, including bulletin boards and online resources.
- The Recycling Assistants and Source Reduction Assistants collect one-sided paper from computer labs to turn into recycled notepads for students and offices. Look for them at the bookstores downtown and at Wilder desk, or contact us.
- With our help, the College stopped buying fluorescent paper and now buys office paper from BFI. Cutting out fluorescent paper makes the paper we have easier to recycle and reduces the amount of toxic sludge produced by processing.
- One of our long-running projects is to help the College transition to 100% recycled paper in printers and copiers, campus-wide. The problem is that many people believe recycled paper is more likely to jam in printers and copiers, and so our challenge is to find high-grade recycled paper that doesn't do that.
What can you do?
- Take notes on reused paper: use our notepads or find your own
- Print/Photocopy double-sided or on the back of used paper
- Send emails instead of paper memos
- Skip title pages and unnecessary extras
- Shrink your margins or use the option to print multiple pages on a sheet (Mac:
pull down the General menu in the print box to Layout and change the Pages per
Sheet option).
- Post it on the web
- Shrink images to fit more on a page
- Use halfsheets
- Skip the envelope, or reuse one (especially interoffice envelopes)
Back to the Top
Projects Past and Present
In the past few years we've conducted various energy waste audits on campus. Our efforts have focused on finding ways for the College community to use less energy, especially since coal power plants in general and the College's power plant, behind Mudd, in particular, are large-scale polluters. The College has helped out by retrofitting buildings with compact fluorescent light bulbs, motion sensors, low-flow shower heads, and low-flow faucets. The Adam J. Lewis Center for Environmental Studies is a model for environmentally friendly design. Unfortunately the College didn't follow its example when it built the New Science Facility.
What can you do?
- Wash your clothes in cold water.
- Hang dry your clothes.
- Turn off lights when they won't be used for awhile.
- Walk or ride your bike.
- Take the stairs - it's better for you anyway!
- Turn off your computer when you aren't using it. (A general rule of thumb is that your monitor uses half of the energy of your computer and monitor together. Screen savers don't count, but putting the computer to sleep is almost as good as turning the monitor off.)
Back to the Top
Projects Past and Present
The city and the college have been in discussions starting in earnest in 1997 to pool resources and have a city-wide composting system. Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) is presently composting its pre-consumer food waste at the Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project (OSAP)'s Jones farm. We are working with other groups and individuals to try to implement a composting system for CDS.
What can you do?
- Only take the food you will eat (wherever you eat).
- Appreciate dirt and compost and especially worms - they do good work.
- Start your own compost
pile!
- Help OSCA have a productive compost facility by obeying the rules the OSCA composters post.
Back to the Top
Food service...
- We're working on reducing the amount of plastic wasted in the dining halls, particularly in Dascomb and the DeCafe which operate on a largely take-out basis. Our goal is to make reusable utensils as attractive as possible, and to make the items used for takeout recyclable or compostable. Therefore, every firstyear gets a reusable mug when they arrive and we're working on other ideas.
- Our CDS Recyclers (a position begun in 1998) try to make the recycling process as self-explanatory as possible so that people in the dining halls actually use it. There are many opportunities for recycling, particularly in Dascomb, but the recyclables, especially cardboard (pizza boxes etc) are almost always contaminated with food and therefore not recyclable.
- After quite a bit of research, we've found various recyclable or compostable disposable utensils (made out of things like cornstarch). These still have some bugs to work out, like dissolving in hot soup, but we hope to make them available in the dining halls soon.
And more...
- Oberlin Food Rescue is something recyclers occasionally help out with, to donate unserved dining hall food to Second Harvest food bank.
- We created a web-based office supplies swap program a few years ago. It was based on the premise that it costs less to recycle supplies institutionally than to order them from Staples or another distributor. In addition, packaging from shipping costs will be reduced as people clean out their offices.
- Recyclers have been known to do Food Waste Audits, most recently in the fall of 2001, with a view towards making our campus more compost-friendly.
What can you do?
Keep your eyes open, think about what you buy, use, and throw away! If you have questions, contact us - we'll do our best to answer them or point you to someone who can.
If you have any questions about the Recycling Program or comments about our web pages, email us at: recycle@oberlin.edu
This page was last updated in January 2001
