BDN cites waste study in article on College of the Atlantic’s trash decline
A 2011 waste characterization study by the University of Maine School of Economics was cited in a Bangor Daily News article about the decline of trash at Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic. Every fall, one week’s worth of trash and recycling generated at the college is collected, sorted and displayed so students and others can learn more about what they’re throwing away, according to the article. In 2014, when the annual discarded resources audit began, trash made up 55 percent of the material collected, or 1,151 pounds. This fall, trash made up just 30 percent of the collected material, or 577 pounds, the BDN reported. The audit did not include food scraps or other organic material that the college collects with buckets in every dorm and composts at its farm, the article states. Compostable material comprises more than 40 percent of what is in the trash bags of most Mainers, according to the UMaine study, so its disappearance from the trash bags at the College of the Atlantic is positive, according to the school’s discarded resources manager.