Located on the edge of campus in a dark brown double wide trailer, the office of the Campus Zero Waste Program is modest. But it’s reconstructing the way the University of Oregon handles trash. The program, which started as a class project in the ’80s, has become nationally recognized as a hub for efficient waste practices.

Karyn Kaplan has been involved with the program since its humble beginnings. Originally a student activist, now the Zero Waste Program manager, Kaplan has devoted over two decades to this program. She strives to create a healthier environment by educating people about sustainable practices. Her faithful six-year-old black lab is often trailing close behind her, whether it’s around her offices in the trailer or across the country.  

Despite being run by only 60 students and a handful of staff, this grassroots movement is making a big difference.

Since 2008, the program has increased in productivity nearly 800 percent.

The efforts put forth by the Zero Waste Program has lessened UO’s carbon footprint and provided a platform for future growth in environmental awareness.

The program began in 1989 when Kaplan and nine other students in an environmental studies course at the UO started collecting and recycling materials from buildings around campus. 

Kaplan remembers when the potential of the program seemed infinite. In the early ’90s, Kaplan was sent to a conference with the National College and University Recycling Coalition for the Zero Waste Program. She was in a small room with a group of eight or nine pioneers from colleges around the country. No one knew each other before that day, but somehow they all had been striving for the same goal.

“There was a collective conscious among everyone,” Kaplan said. “We recognized that there was a huge surge around the country at that time, it seemed like recycling programs were showing up more prominently.”

In the last 25 years the Zero Waste Program has traveled a road paved entirely by UO students. 

With nearly 25,000 students contributing to the waste on campus, the university is responsible for maintaining a sustainability for itself and in Eugene.

When the program began, students relied on revenue from recycling bottles and cans until they received funds from the administration and ASUO — which enabled them to institutionalize their efforts and create the UO Recycling Program on March 17, 1991. 

Eight years later in 1999, the Recycling Program entered into a test mode with a local company, Rexius Forest Products, to experiment and develop a compostable waste recovery.

In 2012 the program transformed yet again, rebranding itself as the Zero Waste Program. All campus and community events from then on have been geared towards generating zero waste.

“We changed the name because we were over 50 percent recovery rate and we were doing more than recycling. We wanted to reflect where we are going,” Kaplan said.

Those beginning efforts have transformed the way we handle waste here on campus, especially in the last six years.

For example, in 2008 27 tons of compostable materials were properly disposed of due to the Zero Waste program. In 2013, 227 tons of composted materials were disposed — a 732 percent increase.

Several sites on campus have adopted sustainable practices including Moss Street Childcare Center, Hamilton Dining area, Dux Bistro, Bean Kitchen and Carson Kitchen.

According to Kaplan, this continued success could not have been achieved without Housing and Food Services.

“Housing is raising the bar,” Kaplan said. “When we started the program, housing was the first to jump on board. They agreed to remove paper cups, and gave everyone reusable bottles — that was in 1991.”

The amount of waste diverted through housing increased 150 percent in this last year.

Another factor in the Zero Waste progression has been the UO Catering efforts.

Catering alone has been at a 95 to 98.9 percent recovery of compostable goods. This is largely due to the efforts of prerecycling and precomposting. For the first IntroDUCKtion of the 2013 summer 1,500 pounds of food were prepared and 267 pounds were disposed, and only three pounds were thrown away as trash.

All of the compost collected on campus goes to the Facilities Services parking lot across Franklin to be sorted through. Eight to 12 tons of compostable materials are sent to Rexius each week.

“In the ’90s we started taking yard debris and conducting pilots and experimenting with composting,” said Jack Hoeck, vice president of environmental services at Rexius. “Two and half years ago we joined Food Not Waste and composting really took off. The organic growth over the past decade has grown a lot, we now collect 25,000 tons of just yard debris each year.”

Rexius does hot composting in large rows with air pumps to oxygenate the piles and allows the materials to breakdown on a molecular level to produce nutrient rich soil. The company then sells the soil to residential and commercial clients as well as utilizes it here on campus grounds.

A portion of the compost is put into an Earth Tub and is converted to soil used at the campus Urban Farm.

The students employed by the Zero Waste Program organize disposal for music festivals that come through Eugene, and large events here on campus such as ESPN GameDay, IntroDUCKtions and the street fairs.

In 2007, the street fair used 35 trash cans. When Zero Waste got involved the following year, that number was cut to nine. “The grounds were a lot cleaner in the end, ” Kaplan said.

The EMU has been a place of sustainable cultivation as well. Zero Waste coordinator Phil Chesbro has been implementing studies of different signage that could effect how students throw away their trash.

“Most people are able to decide what can and what can’t be composted. The labeled bins are neatly organized all around campus to assist in organizing food waste,” Chesbro said. “However, what most people aren’t entirely aware of is the process in which the piece of garbage endures once it is properly or improperly disposed of, and what that means for our environment.”

The office composting program is an extension of the Zero Waste Program. Its goal is to develop a composting method for office buildings. Faculty and students can sign up to learn a basic compost practice and borrow equipment so they can begin their own composting.

“Our first week we had eight bins in four buildings and collected seven pounds of compost. Now it’s 100-120 pounds per week,” Chesbro said.

Currently 68 people in 21 buildings around campus are using the equipment. Chesbro encourages more people to look into this opportunity. He wants this program to be a positive experience for people and help change the attitude toward composting.

“Since the beginning of this school year 4,122 pounds of compost has been collected. That comprises only 2 percent of what is collected on campus,” Chesbro said.

The people of the Zero Waste Program hope to create a sustainable future for the UO and Eugene that profits economically while creating jobs for students and promoting environmental interest people in the community.

“We really want this practice to become automatic,” Kaplan said. “Through teaching people how to do something you can spread the word and really make a difference.”

The University of Oregon Outdoor Program is hosting the Banff Mountain Film Festival for the 15th year in a row this April 17 and 18 at the McDonald Theater. The Banff Mountain Film Fest World Tour is a widely anticipated annual event that features a variety of outdoor enthusiasts in high intensity conditions.

“This is one of the largest film festivals in North America,” said Rithy Khut, office coordinator at the Outdoor Program. “It’s an opportunity for Eugene to host a world renowned film festival.”

Traveling all over the world, the Banff Centre promotes a lifestyle of creativity and inspiration. They achieve this through captivating shots of adventure that are expressed in a stream of aesthetically stimulating short films.

Action filled clips of paragliding, kayaking and much more will be found at this two night event. The films address issues in the environment, as well as describing cultures around the world through the eyes of outdoor enthusiasts.

The goal of the event is to promote an active and exciting lifestyle. The Outdoor Program hopes the event can reach as many individuals as possible with its variety of action films.

“The Outdoor Program’s purpose is to promote the idea of students getting to the outdoors and we feel bringing the festival to Eugene helps that cause,” Khut said. “As students and people in the community watch these films from all over the world, our hope is that it will inspire them to go adventure.”

The Banff Mountain Film Festival began in 1986 as an outreach program to bring the talents and efforts of the world’s finest mountain filmmakers to other communities. Beginning in Banff, Canada and a few other small towns nearby, the film festival has grown and now visits 40 countries and reaches over 390,000 people with over 840 screenings.

Screenings for each tour location vary. The host organizations select films that best reflect the interests of the community. The proceeds from the tour screenings are put toward local outdoor programs, community causes and trail maintenance groups in addition to any local outdoor establishment.

Tickets went on sale March 31, and are expected to sell out soon. The cost of a ticket is $11 each night for UO students and Outdoor Program co-op members and $15 for general public.

They are available without processing fees at the co-sponsor’s shops downtown such as Backcountry Gear, REI-Eugene and Tactics. The UO Ticket Office and all TicketWest locations offer tickets as well with a charge.

The Washington Jefferson Park rehabilitation has been highly anticipated by local skaters and other community members. The park is scheduled to open in April with an official grand opening for National Skate Day on June 21 and will be the largest covered and lit public skate park in the United States at 23,000 sq. ft.

In effort to create a communal environment, the Washington Jefferson Park will also include an urban plaza catering to families, vendor pads for events, bike racks, benches, drinking fountains and a relocated bathroom that is much more visible.

“This park is going to prevent the crime that used to be here. All those tweakers and bums aren’t going to be here anymore,” said local skater Shaun Ownbey as he peered through the fence. “When this was all a playground, it was the scariest place.”

The park will also contain energy-efficient lighting that will light the park 24 hours a day.

Dreamland Skate parks designed and built the park. Mark Scott, CEO of Dreamland, also built the famous Burnside Skate Park in Portland. It was built illegally 22 years ago, and later sanctioned by the city and immortalized in Tony Hawk’s skating video game.

“There are only a limited amount of cities that have skate parks of a substantial sort,” Darryl Larson, a Eugene parks foundation board member, said. “Those cities tend to get these big competitions that come in, and I think Eugene is going to end up getting some of those world-renowned competitions here.”

Large-scale events and competitions will have continuous economic benefits for Lane County and the Eugene community, along with many other positive benefits. Some community members have lauded the 24-hour access to the park’s bathroom, the first of its kind in Eugene. The bathroom was designed after the Portland Loo project, and speaks directly to some of the needs of the Whoville movement, which began campaigning for 24-hour bathroom options after members of SLEEPS won a court case upholding that their removal from the Wayne Morse Free Speech was unconstitutional.

Skaters and community members alike are looking to the park as a productive renovation to the community.

The Student Recreation Center and Erb Memorial Union are currently both under expansion that will result in platinum LEED certification. LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certification program based on a points system for how sustainable buildings are.

LEED certified buildings stand out in a growing and competitive industry and achieving platinum rank is even more impressive.

The SRC has a primary focus on sustainability while constructing every detail of the expansion that is scheduled to open its doors in January 2015.  The goal is to let the building speak for itself when it comes to innovativeness and environmental awareness.

“We wanted to make sure that when you walk in you know you are in an environment that promotes a healthy lifestyle,” Bryan Haunert said, the associate director of facilities and operations services at the SRC.

The platinum certification will make the SRC one of the top recreation centers in the nation with that standing.

“I think it’s awesome that our school is making those efforts to be environmentally concerned,” student Claire Hamilton said. “It puts a good light on our school that we’re making the effort to do that.”

While designing the building’s function and flow, it is an imperative choice to include interactive sustainable features that could educate students and help them understand their environmental impact.

“We’re trying to create an interactive kiosk for students that are interested in learning about the sustainable aspects of the building,” Haunert said.

Some of the energy efficient features that can be found in the renovated SRC with valuable benefits are natural ventilation, daylight harvesting and rainwater collection.

“I think it’s really cool that it will be LEED certified,” freshman Evan Dahlquist said. “That’s one of the reasons I think it is a good decision to do the expansion.”

The EMU also plans to attain platinum LEED certification, the highest standard for buildings in terms of green construction.

Construction is scheduled to finish in summer of 2016, while the grand opening is scheduled for that fall. The expansion will result in approximately 80,000 square feet of new space and 134,000 square feet of renovated space.

“The extra money that it is taking now will definitely pay off in the long term,” freshman Maddie Vansell said. “It sucks to walk through all of this construction but it will be worth it.”

The expansion will accommodate the 24,000 student population, while the current 1970s design can accomodate 16,000 students.

The EMU is making efforts to recycle and reuse materials from the original facility as much as possible while prioritizing sustainable design in the new student wing.

Other platinum LEED certified UO buildings are the Law School and the Wayne Morse Suite in Portland. The Ford Alumni Center is ranked with gold LEED certification as well.

The Eugene Green Alley Project was started by University of Oregon senior landscape architecture major Jeffrey Luers. The push for green alleys has long been an interest for Luers. He has lived next to alleyways in his last two Eugene residencies and has first-hand experience with the pitfalls of their present conditions.

“It started out way smaller,” Luers said. “I started by searching for alley parks and it really interested me.”

The projects aims to develop the 26 miles of alleyways that Eugene has into more sustainable community spaces while exploring their potential uses.

“This is about facilitating conversations that I think should be happening,” Luers said.

Teamed up with a group of PR reps from the UO School of Journalism and Communication, Luers has made a lot of headway on the project since starting it last summer.

Luers has devised a list of multiple purposes for the alleyways, which was organized by the results of a survey that ran from Jan. 1 to Feb. 14 that reached 95 Eugene residents. One of the results presented is that out of the surveyed 59 residents that responded to the question and live on an alleyway, only 11 were satisfied with its current use.

“It would be really nice if the alleys were paved or served a better purpose than what they are currently,” junior Anna Wencel and senior Nicole Ghiselli said. They are roommates and live off campus near an alleyway. “It isn’t the most pleasant of places and we primarily use it during the daytime for walking and biking.”

The survey showed that the top use for alleyways is walking, followed by biking. Luers suggests that we pave the alleyways that have been gravel for the 30-45 years that they have existed. This would provide pedestrian-friendly areas that could decrease the amount of bike and car collisions.

The biggest dislikes people have of alleyways are crime and drainage, in addition to access and lighting. The Green Alley Project would bring these dilapidated places into consideration. They have progressed by talking with residents of the Friendly and Whiteaker neighborhoods about the development.

The group has also attracted local businesses such as Falling Sky, Hop Valley and the Growler Guys that have agreed to get on board with the project.

The Green Alley Project will be collecting 25 percent of sales from Ninkasi Brewing Company on March 31 from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Luers compiled case studies of three different cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Montreal that have implemented green alleys. The Green Alley team presented this collection of information to the City of Eugene last Monday, March 10. This resulted in gaining endorsements from both city councilman Chris Pryor and Mayor Kitty Piercy.

“It’s been growing faster than I can keep up with,” Luers said. “That just goes to show how powerful the idea is.”

Great ideas are generated daily, but action upon those ideas are not. If this is a bit too common for you, and you wish to improve the campus and community, look into the Student Sustainability Fund and receive a grant to make those ideas a reality.

The Student Sustainability Fund (SSF) is a portion of money reserved for student projects and organizations. Students must complete a thorough application process to be considered for a grant. The leaders of the Student Sustainability Coalition decide how the money is distributed.

“This is a grant for students with big ideas,” senior Matthew Nelson said. Nelson works for the Student Sustainability Coalition and is the head of the Edible Campus. “Students come to us and if their project is well thought out enough, this money is available for them to pursue their project.”

The fund began in 2005 and has allocated over $260,000 toward student-led projects. The Office of Sustainability is in collaboration with the ASUO to make this possible.

Students have used this fund to create installations and projects that have enhanced sustainability education. Past projects include Project Tomato, the Sustainability Radio News Program and OIMB Sustainability Program.

“The sustainability grant was extremely helpful for our community garden project,” said Rose Rimler, student member of the OIMB Sustainability Program which received a grant from the SSF in 2012. “Without that money, we might have been able to build a community garden here, but we wouldn’t have been able to afford the recycled plastic lumber or the local soil and wood chips.”

The two-step application process is closed  and is no longer accepting applications for this year. Students planning to apply next fall have until Dec. 2 to complete an application of intent. To verify the project’s eligibility a board member is appointed to the student or group for assistance through their final application due on Jan. 24.

“It’s a big learning process.We help them learn how to write a grant. We work with them to make sure everything is thought out and their plan is feasible,” Nelson said. 

Passionate and innovative ideas that will create a positive impact on the environment are exactly what the Sustainability Fund election board is looking for. If the project takes place on the UO campus, the funding isn’t used as stipends to students or to pay for consultant fees and the execution is primarily student ran then your idea is ready for an application of intent.

Attendance to a writing workshop full of tips and effective tools led by official EMU grant writer Mary Farrington is a requirement of applicants that increases chances of receiving funds.

Final grant applications are formal proposals with a cover letter explaining the project’s purpose and plans.

Projects that exceed a request of $10,000 will not be considered unless notable. The grant is accessible for up to one year and remaining money after that year will be returned back to the fund unless a request for extension is requested.

“We have a great infrastructure in place for future students who might want to use it. It’s also been a great refuge for students who want to find some time away from their busy class schedules,” Rimler said.

RecycleMania is a recycling competition that began in Ohio in 2001 and has spread throughout the majority of North America. Colleges in all 50 states and even some in Canada participate each year. Currently, 461 colleges and universities are participating in the 2014 RecycleMania Tournament.

This program was designed to create a competition between colleges to inspire and increase participation in campus recycling programs. Many schools have used Recyclemania as a kick-off to start a recycling program on campus.

UO first joined the mania in 2003 when the recycling was only collected in campus housing and dining services. In 2010 the stakes were raised when OSU and UO established a Civil War out of the competition. Both schools compete against each other to find out which campus can recycle and compost the highest 
cumulative pounds per person in 10 weeks.

“OSU’s coordinator and I decided to put more emphasis on the Civil War aspect of RecycleMania, since neither school was in the upper rankings.” Robyn Hathcock, UO Housing Zero Waste Program coordinator and director of Recyclemania, said.

“It’s a good ploy to get students excited and involved,” sophomore Samantha Martin said. “It’s competitive in a positive way.”

This age-old rivalry has increased the competitiveness on both campuses. “The UO and OSU are really well matched so it definitely makes the contest interesting each year.” Hathcock said.

To commemorate the victory, a trophy was constructed out of completely recycled materials. OSU won  the RecycleMania Civil War in the 2010, 2011 and 2012. The UO won it in 2013.

The cumulative greenhouse gas reductions for UO are 245 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. To contextualize, it would be the same effect as 48 cars off the road and equals the energy consumption of 21 households.

OSU is close behind with the total equivalent of 46 cars off the road. All results from the current and past competitions can be found on Recyclemania’s website.

“I recycle and compost regularly but with OSU as our rival it gives me more of a reason to,” freshman Sarah Lindley said.

RecycleMania also functions as a benchmark tool for university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities on their campuses. The competition is supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise program.

WasteWise helps organizations and businesses apply sustainable material management practices to reduce waste. Launched in 1994, WasteWise has addressed tomorrow’s environmental needs. All U.S. businesses, local governments and non-profit organizations can join WasteWise. WasteWise participants range from small organizations to large multinational corporations.

This is a great opportunity to boost our campuses recycling effort and be a part of an educational campaign, as well as prove to OSU that Eugene knows how to clean up its trash.

Near the fertile land of the Willamette River is a garden owned and maintained by the University of Oregon. It’s called the Urban Farm and it is where students are cultivating skills to grow their own food and truly live sustainably.

The Urban Farm has been educating students in the importance of food studies for 38 years. The classes are offered within the department of landscape architecture but are open to students of all majors.

The Urban Farm started in 1976 as a group of students interested in gardening. It became a class in 1982 with Ann Bettman as the director. She built the foundation for the program and current director Harper Keeler inherited it in 2007.

The Food Studies program is creating a minor offered to graduate students with a specialization and undergrads interested in food-related matters.

“I would definitely recommend this class to anyone interested in small-scale gardening, local sustainability or being as self-sufficient as possible,” said Morgen Dorsey, a junior digital arts major. Dorsey took the class for her landscape architecture minor and said it inspired her to reconsider the way agricultural gardens can be incorporated into an urban landscape.

Students from over 89 different areas of study have elected to take courses.

“The classes offer hands-on experience where students learn by doing,” Keeler said.

Keeler teaches civic agriculture at the farm. Students learn how to grow food from the ground up while discovering the significance of eating locally through food assignments. Students also help the community by donating the excess harvest to Food for Lane County.

“Each class is broken into teams that work together to grow something. Each team has a leader, who are professors from the university and master gardeners from around Eugene,” Keeler said.

Registration is competitive since spots are limited.

In an effort to address the registration issue, two years ago the ASUO funded an over-realized grant of $42,000 for the farm to expand its program in order to meet the rising student interest. The Columbia Green on Columbia Street and The Grove, next to CASL on Moss and 18th Avenue are both extensions of Urban Farm.

The Grove is a student garden with plots of land available to rent for a small fee. Plots can be reserved for a school year to be utilized for any gardening purpose.  The Columbia Green is primarily used as a demonstration garden for classes at the Urban Farm.

The gardens are places where communities are built and also serves well as a buffer from the university setting to the Fairmont neighborhood.

The Urban Farm practices several organic gardening philosophies such as the basic NW French Raised Bed Intensive, Steve Solomon’s approach and Ruth Stout and Uday Balwalker’s composting in situ/no-till method.

Climate Justice League and the Student Sustainability Center have been involved with the expansion and maintenance of the gardens and their preservation. Ultimately the farm will rely on student interest, which has fluctuated throughout the years. Food studies will play a big role in this push for sustainable living and the Urban Farm is the place to learn about it.

Throughout the world communities are converting their plumbing systems into greywater systems to not only save money on their water bill, but to save the environment. At the University of Oregon, some renovations around campus are making this type of thinking a goal.

“Sustainability has been a main focus for the Student Rec Center Expansion User Group,” said Bryan Haunert, associate director of facilities at the recreation center, in an interview.

Currently the UO is pumping fresh water into the toilet bowls. Clean filtered water gets deposited into a waste stream that goes to the same place sink water and shower water go to be disinfected. Greywater is recycled water from various other sources, which is then collected and used for wastewater.

It was agreed that starting from scratch with a new aquatic facility that was much more energy-efficient was a great way to accomplish both. This meant that the current pool could serve a new purpose, according to Haunert.

Discussions regarding the current pool began and eventually led to a plan that the pool would be converted into a cistern, a tank that collects run-off rainwater from the roof. This water will then be utilized as the water flushed in the toilets throughout the facility.

“The current pool holds about 188,000 gallons of water, after the renovation it will hold close to 120,000 gallons,” Haunert said.

Since the first meetings of the Rec Center expansion in March 2011, one of the goals has been to showcase sustainability and technology achievement in a way that engages and educates the user.

It is estimated that the system will collect, treat and repurpose about 400,000 gallons of flushing water per year. This design also allows the ability to pump water into the cistern during the dry months to provide flushing water.

While it may not be on the forefront of students minds, some are receptive to the change.

“I think it’s a good idea,” sophomore Lucy Lyon said. ”The fact that they are preventing waste is great and they won’t be using drinking water that could be used for other purposes.”

The cost for the remodel of the pool is approximately $150,000. The system is expected to save the university $3,000 – $4,500 per year. Considering water rate increase and economic inflation, the cistern over the next 30 years could save the UO between $238,000 and $356,000, according to Haunert.

Another goal of the SRC expansion is to become 35 percent more efficient than the Oregon Energy Code requirements, the cistern is expected to play a significant role in that as well.

Focus the Nation is a nonprofit organization located in Portland that empowers young leaders to embrace the reality of our environmental challenges and encourage them to find solutions. Since 2008 it has aided over 300,000 youth in educating their communities about sustainable practices.

Universities across the nation such as Western Washington University, University of New England and University of Alabama have adopted programs through the Focus the Nation Forums-to-Action framework to begin campus-wide programs and events. In 2012, former University of Oregon student James Walton and current student and Program Coordinator Weston Cooper took initiative of this opportunity and brought it to UO.

The Student and Community Outreach for Renter Efficiency program is a free peer-to-peer energy assessment service offered to UO students living off campus. Evaluations of current energy use and free installation of energy-efficient materials such as CFL light bulbs, faucet aerators and weather stripping are a few of the services $CORE has to offer.

The student energy educators help households save money by providing materials and information that will lower their utility bills while reducing their carbon footprint. The hands-on energy assessment generally takes about an hour and is with two trained energy educators.

“Most students only plan to live in their residence temporarily and don’t consider investing in sustainable practices. This makes it easier for them while also educating them of the benefits,” Cooper said. ”The program really helps bridge the gap between homeowners and tenants.”

As a bonus and even more reason to take an afternoon to learn about sustainable practices, if more than half of the roommates are present, $CORE will buy a large Track Town pizza for the household.

The program gains resources through the UO Office of Sustainability and the existing Student and Community Outreach for Renter Efficiency model. Weatherizing products are provided from Jerry’s Home Improvement Center in Eugene. Funds are provided by a generous grant from EWEB and other local company donations.

In its first year, 2012-13, $CORE installed sustainable materials in 40 houses and two fraternity houses. In its second year they have already reached over 70 houses.

The program operates in preparation of the cold seasons when students’ utility bills tend to rise. It is currently in its last week of operation for the year but plans on increasing the amount of household installations beginning in the fall. Residents can sign up for an energy assessment on the Office of Sustainability website.

You can also follow $CORE on Facebook for updates and more.