Solar powered trash compactors and recycling bins replaced garbage cans in the Quad and select spots on campus Monday.
Forty new Bigbelly dual stations will be leased on a monthly basis for $4,000 total. New trashcans will be seen outside the Barnes and Noble Bookstore, LSU Student Union, Pleasant Hall, Hodges Hall and the Journalism building.
The new units are projected to save the University $69,000 per year according to Student Government President Andrew Mahtook. The new stations will reduce labor costs and are built a with vandalism resistant design. said Campus Sustainability manager Sarah Temple. Temple said she hopes they will increase the proportion of waste on campus that is recycled.
The University won the Environmental Protection Agency’s nationwide GameDay Recycling Challenge in 2015, both by total amount of waste recycled and per capita in the Southeastern Conference, recycling 86,400 lbs. of garbage total.
“We’re trying to increase our recycling rate to 50 percent monthly,” Temple said. “It tends to hover around 40 percent.”
Former SG Senator Matthew Boudreaux introduced the idea to SG, Mahtook said. SG senators approached Campus Sustainability about having some of the stations installed by the Union, Temple said.
The Bigbelly stations have a panel with green, yellow and red indicator lights to show how close to capacity they are at a glance and constantly transmit their status online. That way, staff can tell which need to be emptied, saving unnecessary trips and collecting information useful for future planning.
“After a few months we’ll have data on trends, seeing how fast these fill up, how efficient we’re being,” Temple said.
The same dual trash compactors and recycling bins have been installed in the French Quarter and along Canal Street in New Orleans and at universities such as Virginia Tech University and Georgia Southern University.
According to specifications released by Bigbelly, the stations have a lifespan of about 10 years. The stations have the capacity to act as WiFi hotspots, a feature that will not be utilized at this point but may be in the future, Temple said.
“We’re hoping these will further increase the visibility of sustainability and recycling on campus.” Temple said.