Zero Waste Event

Zero Waste Event

With an eye towards sustainability, this year's OPERS Fall Festival was our first large-scale Zero Waste Event!

In our efforts to reduce what is sent to the landfill and act in a more sustainable manner, we accomplished the following:

• Collected 200lbs of pre-consumer food scraps during the production of the meal. Scraps were diverted to PICA for use in their compost bins
• Collected and recycled over 81.7lbs of aluminum cans.
• Collected and recycled 38lbs of plastic water bottles
• Collected over 40 bags of compostable food scraps and biodegradable plates, utensils and napkins
• Transported all 40 bags to College Eight/Oakes Dining Hall where fed into the pulper machine, resulting in over 1000lbs of usable pulp for the College 8 compost projects and various other university landscaping uses

We served approximately 3600 hungry meal plan holders which was an increase of about 500 over last year! Thanks to the members of the Student Environmental Center for assisting with the collection and OPERS for supporting this Zero Waste Event!