Office of Environmental Sustainability

Earth Day Highlight: Which Faculty recycles best? Latest survey results tell it all.


22 April 2009
To: NUS Faculty, Staff Members and Students

1.


A survey on the contamination of recycling bins was conducted on 3/2/09 and 12/3/09. This contamination survey measures the presence of wastes that cannot be recycled or recyclable wastes that were thrown into the wrong bins.

2.




This survey was conducted to measure the impacts of the revamp of the NUS recycling infrastructure that Office of Estate and Development, Office of Environmental Sustainability and NUSSU Student Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE) embarked in November 2008. The changes implemented included adding additional instructional labels (the types of wastes which can and cannot be recycled) on top of recycling bins and partnering every recycling station with a general waste bin.

3.


We are pleased to announce that after such improvements, there was low contamination rate throughout most recycling bins in campus –correct recyclables collected in most recycling bins are above 75% of the total volume of items collected.

4.



Listed below are the performance of the various faculties in the contamination of recycling bins survey (in descending order): a. Faculty of Arts and Social Science (most segregated) b. Faculty of Science c. Faculty of Business d. Faculty of Engineering ( highest level of contamination)

5.

DO YOUR PART: By contaminating the bins, efforts of others who recycle properly may go to waste. Read the bin labels before throwing.   Click for larger image
Figure 1: Example of a label
on top of recycling bin
 

6. ACT RIGHT: Please throw the recyclable materials in the correct bin.
 
Recycling Bin Yes No
Paper Any documents, magazines or newspaper Food contaminate paper
Paper cups, tiisue
Cans Alumninum drink cans only Straws
Bottles EMPTY plastic bottles only Food contaminated plasctics
Bottles EMPTY plastic bottles only Food contaminate Plastics
Download actual image.

7.

 TIP OF THE SEMESTER: Empty your plastic bottle or aluminum drink can before throwing it into the recycling bin.
8.

 Last but not least, OES would like to show our utmost appreciation to SAVE students for painstakingly inspecting every single recycling bin in NUS. Thank you!
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