S.W.A.T.T (Special Waste Action and Technology Team) is making a big impact in the goal of sustainability on campus. Three principles are at the core of this effort are reduce, reuse, and recycle.Reduce Most drinking fountains on campus have a fill station where people can refill their water bottles. Instead of continuously buying new water bottles, people can reuse the ones they already have. Les Harper, sustainability coordinator at BYUH, said the fill stations have significantly reduced the amount of drinking bottles that would have been used—and thrown away. “In total, the fill stations have been used over 100,000 times. That could potentially be 100,000 drinking bottles. It’s a program that’s gone basically unnoticed by most,” Harper added. ReuseA program that has received more notice for reuse is Give ‘N’ Take. “We literally take old stuff, add value to it, and make it possible for other people to use it instead of throwing it away,” said Gabrielle Sabalones, a senior from Indiana majoring in ICS. Sabalones works first-hand with the materials that come and go from Give ‘N’ Take. “In the past month, we gave away 4,233 items,” Sabalones said. Give ‘N’ Take is not designed to save the school money, but “it saves the church and students about 1/3 of a million dollars,” Harper said. Recycle The school collects paper, newspaper, cardboard and sometimes metal to recycle. Carlos Speranza, the sustainable program manager and pest control supervisor, said recycling these materials saves the garbage truck two trips to the landfill each week. “The trash guy used to go to the landfill six times a week. Now he goes only four times a week,” Speranza said. “He goes three times for free because we are a non-profit company. The other three times we had to pay $300, so we save $600 a week.”The garbage collector used to take a lot more plant debris to Honolulu as well. Leaves can be recycled into mulch to be used to grow more plants. Harper said, “Between the PCC and BYUH, we are always having to trim back trees and palms, to make the campus beautiful and safe. So we have resurrected a tub grinder. It’s a great, big, massive piece of equipment for grinding up the branches, and mulch comes out the other end.” The tub grinder saves all of these materials from having to be wasted and transported. Awareness/Involvement Speranza said students can help the sustainability workers by “putting the materials in the right bin.” Speranza said the recycle bins end up with trash in them, even though they are specifically labeled for cardboard only. “Just follow the signs and sort the material where it belongs,” Speranza advised. Harper added students can alert Facilities Management if there are places that aren’t being properly serviced. As part of their effort to help people become more aware of the recycling and sustainability programs on campus, the Facilities Management team also makes laundry detergent. The program is called Soap for Savings. “We’re not doing it to be nice. We’re doing it as an awareness program to say ‘Hey, we’ve done really well in recycling and this is why we’re giving you the soap’,” Harper said. The materials used to make a gallon of soap costs only $1, and one gallon can wash 16 loads of laundry, said Speranza. Uploaded January 21, 2015
Writer: Kaitlin Broyles
