UCI’s Waste & Recycling Efforts Featured in UC-Vox Climate Lab Series

UC Irvine’s waste minimization and recycling efforts are featured in the latest University of California-Vox Climate Lab series, which explores the environmental impact of single-use items and offers easy hacks to reduce and reuse. The UCI campus community has made a serious effort to cut waste in recent years, resulting in an 80 percent diversion rate, which means our campus has diverted 80 percent of its waste from landfill to recycling and composting facilities. 

“We really do need to prioritize reduce and reuse over recycling,” said Anne Krieghoff, UCI’s Recycling and Sustainability Manager. “Recycling is great to deal with a product once it’s already in your hand. But waste minimization is more important.” UCI continues to implement sustainability initiatives that encourage a reduce and reuse style of thinking. For example, over 160 water bottle filling stations have been installed on campus, avoiding the use of roughly 3 million plastic bottles each year. 
Krieghoff is leading UCI’s efforts to achieve zero waste and emphasizes the importance of “changing our processes little by little each year until they become the way we do things.”
 

Click here to learn more about UCI’s waste and recycling efforts. 
Click here to learn more about the Climate Lab series.