Colorado College's trashy story

One wouldn’t call elite Colorado College trashy by any means.

Except maybe on Tuesday when 30 cubic yards of trash was piled high around the flagpole near Worner Campus Center.

Nearby, gloved members of  EnAct, a  campus environmental group, rummaged through a day’s worth of campus trash.

 Aside from a few  exclamations of “oh ick,” none of the students seemed squeamish about digging out an amazing amount of garbage that should have been recycled instead of headed for the landfill: pizza boxes, soda and beer cans, plastic cups, cookie and cracker boxes, a copy of the New York Times, envelopes, computer paper. 

They plan to recycle what they can.  A few items will be cleaned up and donated to a charitable resale store — towels, curtains, clothing.

The college’s wet food trash was not included. But nevertheless, they found a stray potato, gooey pizza slices and other table scraps that would be placed in the college’s compost pile.

The event publicized the college’s participation in a 10-week national Recyclemania to see which college’s recycling numbers are best. Last year, Colorado College came in 22nd out of more than 200 colleges.

Such awareness events have helped raise the campus waste diversion rate — what goes somewhere other than the landfill — from 15 percent to more than 45 percent, explained Emily Wright, CC’s sustainability coordinator.  Besides increasing that number, the campus also is working to improve its “waste minimization rate” — cutting down on trash by promoting use of reusable mugs, water bottles and such.

Surveying the flotsom around him, EnAct member Emil Dimantchev said, “That’s a lot of trash. And it doesn’t just disappear after it leaves the dorm room. If it isn’t recycled it goes to landfills and hurts the environment.”