The Duke Student Government Services and Sustainability Committee (DSG SAS) completed the waste audit in Abele Quad as permitted by the UCAE on April 5, 2021. Two shifts were held: 1-3 pm and 3-5 pm. The waste audit itself took 4 hours with an hour for set up and 20 minutes for disassembly. 17 volunteers were recruited from DSG SAS (including sponsoring senators), Environmental Alliance (EA), Undergraduate Environmental Union (UEU), and other campus environmental organizations. These volunteers were staggered into groups of about 8 people per shift. We measured the weight of pre- and post-sorted waste streams including landfill, composting, and recycling. We also utilized another unit of measure in addition to weight: quantity of pieces (done through a piece-by-piece count). We measured the proportion and percentage of each stream of waste within the total amount of waste collected.
Students audit campus waste, hope to improve composting infrastructure
"Student volunteers got their hands dirty last week during a waste audit coordinated by Duke Student Government and the Environmental Alliance.
During the April 5 event, student volunteers rummaged through large piles of waste taken from the Bryan Center plaza. After picking up a piece of garbage, the volunteers categorized it as trash, recycling or compost and relayed the classification to a data keeper, who punched the label into a spreadsheet..."
By Pilar Kelly April 14, 2021 | 1:50am EDT
'University resources are being wasted': DSG waste audit finds most Bryan Center Plaza waste is missorted
"Last spring’s waste audit conducted by members of Duke Student Government’s Services and Sustainability Committee dug up some pretty rotten results.
Sophomore Shreya Joshi and juniors Hailey Ross and Chaya Brennan Agarwal counted each piece of trash from the Bryan Center Plaza trash cans to observe how well the Duke community was sorting it trash, recyclable and compostable items. Their resulting waste audit results memo reveals that as much as 79% of waste is missorted on average..."