Earth Month @ Duke

By Mary-Russell Roberson
Thursday, March 27, 2008

Among the many Earth Day events happening at Duke this month, perhaps the most unusual is the opportunity to look through other people’s garbage.

There’s even an academic-sounding name for this activity – “garbology.”

The public can get a glimpse – and whiff – of this process on two occasions beginning April 9, when all the trash collected in the university’s main administration building will be thrown in one big dumpster.

“Then we put a big blue tarp on the ground and literally go through it piece by piece,” says Arwen Buchholz, Duke’s recycling and waste reduction coordinator. “If it’s something that can be recycled, we put it in one pile. If it’s something that can’t be recycled, we put it in another.”

After the sorting, the piles will be weighed to determine the percentage of trash that could have been recycled.

Another garbology event will be held during the Earth Day Sustainability Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 22 on the Bryan Center Plaza.

“The goal is to educate people about how much of our trash is actually recyclable,” Buchholz says. “People learn little things — like aluminum foil can be recycled if it’s clean.”

Buchholz says the university, not including the medical center, recycles about a third of its waste. She thinks that percentage could be improved if people were more aware of everything that can be recycled on campus.

Many other Earth Day events are being planned by Buchholz, Duke’s sustainability coordinator Tavey McDaniel Capps and student council members from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, the Duke University Greening Initiative, the Environmental Alliance and Students for Sustainable Living.

Organizers have even arranged a screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie about global warming, “The 11th Hour,” at 5:45 p.m. April 17 at Love Auditorium. A question-and-answer session will follow the movie with a panel including Richard Dent, co-director of The 11th Hour Action Campaign, and Duke ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was among dozens of experts interviewed in the movie. Wallace J. Nichols, a Nicholas School graduate and sea turtle expert, also appears in the movie. He will give the Earth Day keynote address at 6 p.m. on April 22 at the Bryan Center.

Anna Allie, who is working toward her master’s degree in environmental management at the Nicholas School, is helping plan the Earth Day Sustainability Fair.

“We’re doing all this so that people can get a better idea of things they can do every day to live sustainably and protect our natural resources,” Allie says. “A lot of the time, people would like to do something but there are so many different problems – endangered species, global warming – that people don’t know exactly what they can do on a personal level.”

Participants will include the Triangle Transit Authority, the Eno River Association, Durham Department of Water Management, Piedmont Biofuels, SEEDS, One World Market, student environmental organizations and others. Though Duke students are putting a lot of energy into Earth Month, they do not confine their work to April.

“A lot of the momentum we have for sustainable projects on campus comes from student awareness and advocacy,” Capps says. The push from students and the support from the administration have made Duke a leader in sustainability, she adds.

“Some of the policies we have around green building, purchasing and green dining really put Duke on the map,” Capps says, “but we’re always looking for ways to improve.”