Recycling at Stanford is Preserving Our Environment for the Future

The recycling efforts here at Stanford are improving our environment every day. With your help, Stanford has recycled, composted, or otherwise source reduced 61% of its waste in 2006. The results are clear: cleaner air and water, less pollution, more forested land and open space, and reduced greenhouse gases.

Everyone knows recycling means less trash going to our landfills. But the greatest environmental benefits of recycling are related not to landfills, but to the conservation of energy and natural resources and the prevention of pollution when a recycled material, rather than a raw material, is used to make a new product.

Why use a valuable material or product once, and then place it your trash to be buried in a landfill? Instead, divert that material for recycling, and capture the energy and resources already used to make that product. Since recycled materials have been refined and processed once, manufacturing the second time around is much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the first.

Recycling at Stanford Conserves Energy

The paper, glass, metals, plastic, and organic material Stanford recycled in 2006 saved a total of about 91,811 million BTUs of energy, enough energy to power nearly 703 homes for one year, more than the number of homes on campus.

Products made using recovered rather than virgin or raw materials use significantly less energy. Less energy used means less burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. When burned, these fuels release pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide, into the air.

Recycling at Stanford Reduces Air and Water Pollution

Last year, recycling reduced overall air emissions by 123 tons excluding CO2 and methane or 5399 tons including CO2 and methane and reduce waterborne waste by 20 tons.

By decreasing the need to extract and process new raw materials from the earth, recycling can eliminate the pollution associated with the first two stages of a products development: material extraction and processing. Mineral extracting and processing pollute the air, land, and water with toxic materials, such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and sulfur dioxides. Recycling reduces, and in many cases eliminates, these pollutants.

Recycling at Stanford Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Stanford’s recycling efforts last year reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 3914 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE).

By reducing air and water pollution and saving energy, recycling offers an important environmental benefit: it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons, that contribute to global climate change. Recycling and composting reduce greenhouse gas by (1) decreasing the energy needed to make products from raw materials, (2) reducing emissions from incinerators and landfills, which are the largest source of methane gas emissions in the U.S., and (3) slowing the harvest of trees, thereby maintaining the carbon dioxide storage benefit provided by forests.

Recycling at Stanford Conserves Natural Resources

By recycling over 3062 tons of paper last year, Stanford saved 22,992 trees. Stanford reduced the need for 547 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone by recycling over 272 tons of ferrous scrap metal.

By using recycled materials instead of trees, metal ores, minerals, oil and other raw materials harvested from the earth, recycling-based manufacturing conserves the world's scarce natural resources. This conservation reduces pressure to expand forests cutting and mining operations.

Waste Generation Increases

In the United States, we generated approximately 245.7 million tons of MSW in 2005—a decrease of 1.6 million tons from 2004. Excluding composting, the amount of MSW recycled increased to 58.4 million tons, an increase of 1.2 million tons from 2004. This is a 2 percent increase in the tons recycled. The tons recovered for composting rose slightly to 20.6 million tons in 2005, up from 20.5 million tons in 2004. The recovery rate for recycling (including composting) was 32.1 percent in 2005, up from 31.4 percent in 2004. MSW generation in 2005 declined to 4.54 pounds per person per day. This is a decrease of 1.5 percent from 2004 to 2005. The recycling rate in 2005 was 1.46 pounds per person per day. Discards sent to a landfill after recycling declined to 2.46 pounds per person per day in 2005.The state of the economy has a strong impact on consumption and waste generation. Waste generation continued to increase through the 1990s as economic growth continued to be strong. Between 2000 and 2005, total growth in waste generation slowed. On a per capita basis, 2005 waste generation at 4.54 pounds per person per day is only slightly higher than the 1990 rate of 4.50 pounds per person per day. To learn more about waste generation in the US see the USEPA report Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2005 Facts and Figures Executive Summary.(.pdf file)

This data is taken from Stanford University's Solid Waste and Recycling Diversion Report 2006 and fed into the National Recycling Coalition's Environmental Benefits Calculator. See the NRC Calculator Model here.