On February 15th, local nonprofit BRING Recycling’s Waste Assessment Services team conducted a comprehensive waste audit for the City of Eugene’s Atrium Building, which houses the Planning Department. The team isolated a representative sample of 543 pounds of trash, recycling, and food waste from the building’s shared waste dumpsters over a seven day period and provided detailed reporting on the composition of the material. The sort sampled three different streams: trash, commingled recycling, and food waste, and gauged contamination rates in each stream. The purpose of the waste audit is to measure the total output of material from the building and to identify additional materials suitable for recycling or composting while identifying ways to stop waste from happening before it starts.
In addition to providing the Atrium Building's City staff with information that will help identify opportunities to increase waste diversion, the waste assessment project allowed BRING to expand upon their triple-bottom line approach to sustainability: to complete the assessment, BRING partnered with and provided job training and paid positions to members of Square One Villages, an organization that offers jobs to those who might be homeless or who face other barriers to employment.
A news article about the Atrium Building waste assessment can be found at http://www.kezi.com/news/Waste_Assessment_.html. For more information, please contact Deveron Musgrave at 541-682-6842.