Where your waste goes after it’s disposed

By Amanda Thompson

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Ever stop to think about what happens to that Chick-fil-A box when you’re done eating lunch at the Underground? Where does that plastic bottle go when you toss it in the recycling? What about chemicals used in labs? When students throw things away on campus, they can forget one important thing: away is a place, too.

And student waste is never that far from home. The trash generated by about 600,000 people around northeast Kansas is shipped to a landfill in Lawrence. Recycling is sorted in a facility on West Campus, and hazardous waste from University labs is picked up and packaged on campus. Here’s a look at what goes on behind the scenes.

What happens to your trash

Karl Brooks, associate professor of history who also teaches in the department of environmental studies, said students shouldn’t think of waste as out of sight, out of mind.

“Just because somebody takes away that bag of trash from your view doesn’t mean it stops existing,” Brooks said.

The trash from Lawrence and 15 other communities in northeast Kansas ends up in Hamm Landfill, 16984 3rd St. Charlie Sedlock, division manager of Hamm Landfill, said Hamm receives 1,300 tons of trash per day.

Sedlock said once the trash reached the landfill, each truckload was unloaded and spread out to make sure there was nothing that could be hazardous to workers.

“Our guys are trained to look for things that are smoking or fuming or reacting,” Sedlock said.

Kathy Richardson, waste reduction and recycling operations supervisor for the City of Lawrence, said hazardous materials could be dangerous to crews if they weren’t disposed of properly. She said there had been several fires in trash compactors because of flammable hazardous materials.

“We had an incident where an employee was sprayed with a corrosive cleaner. Little drops of this cleaner got on his face and burned his skin,” Richardson said.

Sedlock said as much as 95 percent of what he saw come into the landfill could have been recycled.

“It just depends on what you want to do and what you want to spend to do the recycling,” Sedlock said. “We can put a man on the moon — surely we can recycle.”

What happens to your recycling

Student workers collect recyclables from the bins located in buildings and residence halls around campus. Celeste Hoins, administrative manager of KU Recycling, said her organization handles about 30,000 pounds of recycling each week. After materials are collected, they are transported to a recycling facility on west campus. There, staff members make sure the materials are properly separated, and they further sort materials.

Max Weis, Wichita senior and recycling technician for KU Recycling, is one of the students who pick up materials from recycling locations on campus. Weis said he stopped by five to six places in each campus building, and said it took 20 minutes to pick up office paper, newspaper, bottles, cans and cardboard in each building. Weis said sometimes the wrong things could end up in recycling bins.

“Sorting the paper isn’t too gross but on Saturdays we have to sort bottles and cans and that can get a little nasty because we have to empty out the containers before we bale them,” Weis said. “A lot of times people don’t completely empty their containers or they fill it up with chew and that gets gross quickly.”

KU Recycling generates revenue from the sale of recyclable materials. Plastic and paper, for example, is bought and collected by Batliner Paper Co. in Kansas City, Mo. Money generated from selling recyclable material is put into funds used to further the recycling program.

“If someone is making paper that has to have a 30 percent recycled material content, you have to get that from somewhere,” Hoins said. “And places are willing to pay us for that because we offer them a clean product.”

Weis said working for KU Recycling made him think about the recycling process in a different way.

“I never really recycled before I started this job and didn’t think much of it,” Weis said. “Now I’m more aware of what I go through at home, and I’m sure to recycle it whenever I can.”

What happens to chemicals from labs

When students throw away materials in specialized containers in science labs, they will most likely end up passing through Mike Russell’s hands. Russell, the director for the department of environment, health and safety, said his department’s mission was to make sure hazardous materials were properly disposed of once they’ve been used.

Russell said last year the University threw away 24.5 tons of hazardous chemical material. The majority of hazardous waste he picked up was in the form of liquid solvents, such as alcohol, acetone and hexanes. These solvents and other chemicals he deals with can be corrosive, toxic, flammable or reactive.

The City of Lawrence has a hazardous waste collecting facility at 711 E. 23rd St. that collects household hazardous wastes such as paint and pesticides, but Russell said the University dealt with material students wouldn’t find in their homes.

“We have more of the exotic stuff, the weird stuff,” Russell said.

Russell said he and his staff were out on campus every day of the week, visiting labs and picking up hazardous waste containers once they were full. Russell said hazardous materials on campus were packaged in the department’s facilities before they were picked up once every two to three months by Clean Harbors Environmental Services. From there, the materials are ultimately shipped out of state to be incinerated or turned into alternative fuels in kilns used to make asphalt or concrete.

Because of the dangerous characteristics of the materials Russell works with, he said he would never allow the University’s chemical waste to be sent to a landfill.

Although most students won’t ever see their water bottles, used napkins or lab chemicals again after a swift toss into the appropriate bin, students contribute to the waste produced on campus every day.

“We don’t have a pipe sticking out of our leg like a factory would, so it’s difficult for any of us to imagine our daily activities as polluting,” Brooks said. “But pretty much everyone who comes on campus is in part contributing.”

— — Edited by Susan Melgren

Advertise Here

Comments

part2 (anonymous) says...

So what about when the EPA fines KU? dont think anyone is actually looking at the hazardous waste then

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/sep...

March 3, 2009 at 10:15 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Advertisement