On April 1, the Kirkwood Sustainability Club and Community College Initiative student Vidya Vakkottummal partnered to present “Turning Your Trash Into Treasure,” a presentation highlighting the importance of recycling and the issues within the college’s recycling process.
Vakkottummal is a part of Kirkwood’s CCI’s program, where students all around the world can participate in a 10-month study abroad program at Kirkwood. In order to finish their program, students must complete a community project.
Vakkottummal was inspired to make her community project about recycling after coming to Kirkwood and seeing how people dealt with trash. “Back home, we know where our plastic waste is going,” she said. “I live at the Kirkwood Courts, and there we put everything into one bin. We don’t know where it goes. I asked people who live at the Kirkwood Courts where the waste is going, and they said, ‘We don’t know where it goes.’ That’s where I got my original idea from.”
Vakkottummal comes from a small village in India, where the culture around recycling and waste is far different than she’s come to experience at Kirkwood.
It was a culture shock for Vakkottummal when she saw how much waste is produced in the U.S.
“Here, I noticed everything comes with a plastic package. Back home, it’s part of our culture that we try to avoid plastic.,” she said. “Whenever we buy milk, we go to the place where we get milk with the bottle, so you don’t come home with a bunch of plastics.”
She was further surprised by how little many students know about where the waste goes. “We have this out of sight, out of mind mentality. You take your trash out, it’s out of your sight, out of your mind, you don’t care where it goes or what happens,” she said.
While researching for her project, Vakkottummal was able to meet with representatives from the local recycling facilities to figure out the main issues with recycling in our community.
“Kirkwood is doing a really good job,” she said. “I visited the recycling company and the college really wants to recycle things, but it cannot because there’s too much contamination in the bins.”
Recycling contamination is when non-recyclable waste is put into recycling bins, such as leftover waste, food, liquid and hazardous materials. “We have really good recycling facilities but eventually someone will contaminate the bin by throwing coffee or pizza boxes with grease,” she said.
In response, Vakkottummal partnered with Student Resources and the Kirkwood Sustainability Club to inspire students to be more proactive about where their waste is going. Students can participate in the Recycle Challenge by scanning any of the QR codes on recycling bins in Iowa and Linn Hall cafeterias and logging their recycling deposits.
Students must scan a QR code on one of the flyers around campus and register for the challenge before logging deposits, and whoever correctly deposits the most recyclable material will win a $50 gift card to the Kirkwood stores. The winner of the gift card will be announced on April 18 on the Kirkwood’s Sustainability Club’s social media.
Vakkottummal hopes that the Recycling Challenge will help to build healthy recycling habits in our local community. “The main goal of this challenge is to give them an initiative to do something, then they’ll just keep doing it,” she said. “Most of us do not know what to put in the recycling bin. Sometimes, we’re just confused and we’re like, ‘Do I just put it here, or does it go to the trash?’ Through this challenge, people are starting to ask this. If they do it for two to three weeks, it becomes a habit.”
The Recycling Challenge is still a test run, but if the challenge proves successful, Kirkwood will look into bringing it back next fall, with QR codes around the entire campus.
Recycling contamination is just one part of the big picture when it comes to sustainability. It starts with the individuals, according to Vakkottummal.
“Here I noticed that we generate a lot of waste,” she said. What we need to start with is to stop generating a lot of trash. You have a choice to not buy another water bottle, you can fill up your water in the water fountain so you can save a lot of bottles. Kirkwood allows you to fill up your water bottle in the cafeteria to save plastic. Even the vending machines, you’re using plastic. You have a choice.”
At the end of Vakkottummal’s presentation, she created a pledge wall where students signed their name and vowed to be more proactive about recycling and waste production.
“They can choose whatever pledge they want to take, anything related to sustainability. Like, ‘I’ll be mindful when I put something in the bin,’ or some said, ‘I am going to recycle as much as possible,’” she said.
Categories: Feature
