UWGP's own Jack Johnson will be helping to edit a special waste-themed issue of ODYSSEY, a science magazine for kids.  In addition to lots of kid-friendly waste-related articles and activities, the issue will feature a short interview with Jack about UWGP's work on the UW campus.  Needless to say, both Jack and the UWGP are honored by the invitation to participate.

The waste-themed edition will be released later this year as the November/December issue of ODYSSEY, and it will be in schools across the country shortly thereafter.  In the meantime, Jack will be hard at work trying to help put the issue together.

UWGP's study of the waste produced by residents of McMahon Hall, a UW dorm, are now available online along with results from the rest of our work.  UW undergraduate and UWGP member Megan Rue conducted the sampling, sorting, and analysis detailed in the report, and she came up with lots of interesting findings, including:

1)  Residents in McMahon Hall are currently diverting only about 27% of their waste away from landfills.  This 27% is the lowest diversion rate UWGP has yet seen on campus, implying that residential spaces in UW dorms are sending proportionally more waste to landfills than other campus areas such as public/outside areas and buildings with classrooms, offices, and laboratories.  In fact, this 27% is more than 30% below the campus-wide average, so it seems we have our work cut out for us in the dorms.

2)  The majority (54%) of the waste McMahon Hall residents are sending to landfills is compostable.  This fits with previous UWGP studies across the UW campus, showing once again that the single biggest improvement we can make with our waste efficiency is to compost more.  Since composting is also cheaper than landfilling, "efficiency" in this case refers to both fiscal and environmental benefits.

3)  There is no statistical difference between residential waste produced by upperclassmen and underclassmen.  In other words, UW students don't seem to be learning to do a better job with UW's waste systems over time.  We'll need to explore this result further, but for the present it implies that we need to do a better job communicating our waste systems with UW undergraduates as a whole.  That's a tall order, but we at UWGP have some ideas on how to proceed.

For fall quarter we'll be augmenting this study with data from questionnaires administered to students.  These questionnaires will be designed to help us measure the role of individuals' knowledge and perceptions of UW's waste systems.  Hopefully this will give us a bit more of a read on where our current educational efforts can most effectively be improved.  Until then, however, we'll just have to content ourselves with Megan's terrific work in McMahon Hall.

Junk mail sucks.  Not only does it result in about 41 annual pounds of pure waste for every adult in the U.S. (see https://www.41pounds.org/impact/), but sorting through it also takes up a lot of our time.  In fact, if you only spend 1 minute per mail day sorting/opening/discarding junk mail (44% of which is sent to a landfill unopened), that still adds up to around 400 hours of time dealing with junk mail over the average American's lifetime.

Ending this colossal waste of resources (100 million trees annually for junk mail alone!) can be a hassle, since it's often difficult to get yourself removed from the vast array of junk mailing lists responsible.  There are, of course, websites out there to help get yourself off these lists (check here for a brief and helpful list and discussion), but recently a new tool has also come along...

PaperKarma, a smartphone app that does most of the drudgery for you, allows you to simply take a picture of each offending piece of junk mail with your smartphone, and then the app itself will remove you from the relevant mailing list.  It's like a junk mail attack dog on your phone.  It's also free, easy to download, and customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive.  Lastly, it was developed right here in Seattle, so downloading and using this app will support local folks who are doing good work.  Check it out if you haven't already.

As of April 1st, 2014, Western Washington University has prohibited the sale of all plastic water bottles on campus.  The ban was passed by 73% of student voters, and follows years of campaigning.  WWU joins Seattle U, Evergreen State, and more than 100 other colleges and universities in banning water bottles on campus.  More details are available here, and of course lots more information on the broader movement to ban water bottles can be found on banthebottle.net.

Now that WWU has done it, maybe it's time to push this forward at UW?

Well, our day at the Pacific Science Center has come and gone, and it was a huge success.  The UWGP/WOOF collaborative team was swarmed with visitors all day long... so many visitors, in fact, that there were very few opportunities to take photos due to the density of the crowd.  Still, we managed to snap a few, and although Jack's photographic skills are clearly a bit lacking (seriously, sorry for all the blurry/grainy photos, but these were actually the GOOD ones out of the lot!) these pictures still manage to give a sense of the event.

Thanks again to the WOOF team for working with us, and for doing live demonstrations of 3D printing with recycled plastics.  It was a major hit with all our visitors.  And thanks also to our visitors; it was a pleasure to meet so many interested folks and have the opportunity to talk about our work with plastics, waste, and the WOOF engineers.  Lastly, thanks to the Pacific Science Center for hosting this event, and for putting us in with the animatronic dinosaurs, which made this event one of the most fun experiences in UWGP's short history.

Jen Krenz, a researcher in the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, is conducting a very interesting study of waste in laboratories at UW, and she needs volunteers for waste sorting.  The sort will be held on April 23rd at UW Recycling.  Anyone interested in attending the sort is encouraged to contact Jen at jkrenz@uw.edu by Friday, April 11th for more details.

It's official:  UWGP is again teaming up with WOOF (Washington Open Object Fabricators; these engineers do 3-D printing, often with recycled plastics) -- this time to give a public presentation of our work at Paws-On Science:  Husky Weekend at the Pacific Science Center.

We'll be in attendance at the PacSci on Saturday, April 5th from 10AM to 6PM (we won't be there on Friday or Sunday), and our presentation will focus on reclaiming and recycling discarded campus plastics for use as raw materials in 3-D printing.  As part of our presentation, WOOF engineers will have multiple 3-D printers operating live, so you'll be able to watch plastic objects get magically constructed right in front of your eyes!

Come visit us on Saturday!

We're a bit slow to post this (Jack has been away for a few weeks), but UW Recycling's latest newsletter features an interview with our own Megan Rue.  Megan briefly discusses working with UWGP and the experiences and insights she's gained through her involvement with the project.  Have a look, and congratulations, Megan!