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SLU Taking Part In Campus Race to Zero Waste Challenge in March

02/24/2023

Saint Louis University is taking part in the annual Campus Race to Zero Waste challenge along with many other college campuses around the country. Several events around recycling are scheduled in March. 

Campus Race to Zero Waste's mission is to “Using fair and friendly competition, the Campus Race to Zero Waste provides tools and opportunities that inspire, empower, and mobilize colleges and universities to benchmark and improve efforts to reduce or eliminate waste.”

As this nationwide competition begins it is important for us as a SLU community to reflect on our environmental impact. As a campus community SLU not only participates in single stream recycling, which collects plastics, paper, and metal, but also recycles metal, furniture, electronics, ink cartridges.  

The SLU facilities department places a strong emphasis on recycling and repurposing what they can. Metal recycling involves collecting scrap metal from numerous sources and sends it to St. Louis Metal Recycling, in 2019 facilities sent a total of 48,010 pounds to the center.  

Furniture that has been replaced around campus is collected and stored in a facility for departments to be able to browse if they are in need of furniture for any of their spaces. After COVID-19 desks that were replaced were donated to Urban League to provide classrooms with new desks.   

Every year SLU participates in an e-waste collection drive that collects any electronics with a chord to be taken to Midwest Recycling Center and properly recycled. In the last drive SLU collected more 600 PC’s, 150 laptops, and a number of monitors.

This year SLU will once again be participating in the Campus Race to Zero Waste’s e-waste collection drive which SLU has placed many times over the last 10 years, and won first place in 2019.  

SLU also works with Xerox to recycle ink and toner cartridges, which can be returned to the vendor after use. This program helps increase the diversion rate and save unnecessary plastic waste from the landfill.  

It is important to remember that to properly recycle there needs to be participation on all ends. If a bag of recycling is contaminated with food waste the whole bag will need to be disposed of into the landfill, which is completely avoidable if the plastic is disposed of properly.  

There will be multiple events hosted throughout the next few weeks for members of the campus community to get involved with recycling on campus:.

Java with the Jesuits  

Recycling Game Night  

Electronic Waste Recycling Drive and Shred-It drive  

Anyone with questions or concerns should reach out the facilities department at slustanibility@slu.edu.