If 1,400 people eat lunch, how much trash do they make?
According to Penn’s Green Campus Partnership’s ReThink Your Footprint campaign, only 37 pounds.
ReThink Your Footprint, which aims to raise awareness about waste minimizations, replaces Recyclemania, a national recycling competition in which Penn participated for four years starting in 2008.
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While Recyclemania only judged participants on the amount of trash they recycled, this project, which began on Nov. 4 and ended on Nov. 22, was a set of 32 events and smaller campaigns that focused on general waste minimization.
“We will go broader than recycling this year,” reads the page for ReThink Your Footprint.
The Partnership worked with Alumni Relations to reduce landfill waste by 94 percent at Quakerfest, the alumni event held before the football game on Homecoming. Facilities and Real Estate Services implemented a composting operation to turn food waste into fertilizer earlier in the fall.
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Eco-Reps helped in the effort, leading college house waste audits throughout the month. During waste audits Eco-Reps in each college house sorted through the contents of trash and recycling bins to find out what residents throw away.
They also continued to issue Green Living Certifications, which recognize students who live in college houses for sustainable behavior.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is taking a look at the information gathered during the 18-day campaign.
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