With every established Zero Waste Station on campus, the Cal Poly club sporting the same name has been taking huge steps towards a more sustainable university, an enviro-conscious student body, and of course, a greener and healthier Earth.
Through education, integration of environmentally-resilient practices, and a colorful passion for making change, the Zero Waste Club—one of the many groups under the Empower Poly Coalition—works towards revolutionizing the culture of campus waste and bringing awareness to how impactful our waste truly can be, especially as a collective campus. As stated on their Facebook page and website, the club hopes to create a focus on “Cal Poly’s post-consumer waste by working closely with Cal Poly’s facilities center to help Cal Poly be 80% recycle and compost by 2020.” In the future, they hope to divide the club into project teams in order to focus on individual aspects of their overarching goal: environmental sustainability and resilience.
On October 12th of last year, the club launched their zero-waste, compost project by installing over 30 trash-filtering stations across campus in locations such as The Avenue, the UU, Kennedy Library, and the Red-Brick Dorms. These stations allow students, faculty, and campus visitors to make a conscious and educated decision about where their waste goes, hopefully making an effort to understand the heavy impact of human-produced trash in the process. Next year, the club is planning to host waste audits (digging through the trash to find what could have been diverted to recycling or compost), environmental movie nights, a “Ban the Bottle” campaign against plastic bottles, volunteering opportunities, Instagram competitions, and club collaborations—so keep your eyes peeled for some fun environmentally-positive events and activities!
Although the Zero Waste Club doesn’t have any set time or place for meetings for the upcoming quarter, they encourage anyone who’s interested to check out their social media pages for updates, and to stop by their booth during Club Showcase this fall to join in on the zero-waste movement!
Facebook: Cal Poly’s Zero Waste Club
Instagram: @cpzerowaste
All photos provided by Cal Poly’s Zero Waste Club.