NEWS: How Georgia Universities are Making Efforts Towards Sustainability

By: Megan Leben, Ashley Jones, Elijah Jackson, Savannah King, and Bethany-Grace Bowers

It’s no secret that current college students are one of, if not the most, passionate groups when it comes to the environment, so it should come as no surprise that many college campuses have implemented extensive recycling programs.

Georgia Southern University (home of The Ecology Beat) and other universities in Georgia have established a sustainability center to house programs and efforts of staff and students trying to help the environment. While all of the centers have similar program goals, the details of implementation and effectiveness of each center vary.

A review of four Georgia colleges and universities that vary in size and location highlights both the similarities and differences in the efforts of colleges in the state. Georgia Southern University has three campuses located in Statesboro, Savannah and Hinesville and a student population of about 26,000. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the Statesboro campus with a student population of 18,000. The University of Georgia is located in Athens and has a student population of about 38,000. Georgia Tech is located in Atlanta with a student population of 27,000. The fourth college we will look at is Emory University also located in Atlanta with a population of 15,000. It is important to keep in mind the size and the location of each school when looking at the programs available and how much the school recycles. Cami Sockow, Georgia Southern’s Center for Sustainability Progam Coordinator, Says, “location plays a huge role in how much a university can recycle, because of the services around them willing to take our goods.” Also keep in mind that while the sustainability centers on these campuses may have a few full-time employees, the majority of the efforts are led by students.

In 2015, Georgia Tech recycled 1,190.34 tons of waste, according to their sustainability website. That waste included aluminum, cardboard, clothing and household goods, compost, shredded documents, electronics, glass, hardback books, mixed metal, mixed office paper, non-perishable foods, pallets, plastic, and mixed recyclables. Of that total number of recyclables, cardboard was the main contributor bringing in 399.82 tons. The amount the school has recycled has steadily increased since then with 2,368.47 tons being recycled in 2018.

In 2013, Georgia Southern’s latest recorded recycling statistics, the university recycled 282.6 tons according to the Center of Sustainability on campus. Cardboard was another main contributor to that total number recycled, making up 134.2 tons.

Emory University recycled nearly 4.7 tons of waste which were 70% of the waste produced on campus. Emory has also made a huge contribution to recycling by recycling 240 million gallons of water.

Several Georgia schools have competed in Recyclemania, a national eight-week competition between colleges and universities to see who can recycle the most overall and the most per capita. They release the finishing order on their website after the competition ends and schools report their numbers. Out of the 251 schools across the nation that competed in Spring 2019, six were Georgia schools. The University of Georgia finished at No. 55 in the nation with 324,820 pounds of recycled material. Georgia State finished No. 78 with 235,837 total pounds of recycled material. Georgia Southern came in at No. 241 with 113,830 pounds of recyclables. West Georgia recycled 40,878 pounds of waste putting them at No. 183. Georgia Gwinnett College finished at No. 191 with 36,380 pounds of recycled material and Georgia College and State University (GCSU) rounded out the Georgia school with 24,326 pounds of waste recycled coming in No. 208.

While GCSU has one of the smaller student bodies of the Georgia schools, one student thinks that recycling numbers could be higher if students were more educated about the programs available to them on campus.“They just put the recycling bins out without any notice as to what you can and can’t put in them,” says Georgia College junior, Alex Bradley. “If you genuinely want to know what to put in the bins, you have to do the research for yourself. I think the sustainability office needs to be more diligent about letting the student body know, ‘Hey, this is what you can and can’t put in these bins, recycling goes in there not trash.’ The bins are just there, never talked about.”

Georgia Southern, UGA, Emory and Georgia Tech all have basic recycling programs that provide opportunities for people on campus can recycle things like cardboard, bottles, aluminum cans and paper. Three of the schools also have gameday recycling programs for football gamedays. Georgia Southern, UGA and Georgia Tech all have similar programs that enlist volunteers to hand out trash bags to tailgaters around campus encourage them to recycle. UGA and Georgia Tech have seen tremendous success through their gameday recycling programs.

Georgia Tech diverted 16.9 tons of waste from landfills in 2018 solely from recycling on game days, according to their sustainability website. UGA first started its program in 2008 and diverted nearly 5.2 tons in their first year according to their gameday recycling website. After almost 10 years, that number has increased tremendously to 59.1 tons during the 2017 football season. The 59.1 tons amounted to a little over 23% of gameday waste on the UGA campus.

The students and staff behind these efforts are passionate about making a difference in the world by localizing it to their own schools.

Georgia southern senior Cara Rhoad thinks recycling on college campuses is essential to big-picture sustainability.

“It is important for college campuses to recycle because they have such a large influx of people who care about the efforts,” Rhoad said. “Young minds are great places to start with lifestyle habits, so maybe a college recycling program in the dorm might make a student completely change their outlook on recycling.”

She encourages her fellow students at Georgia Southern and throughout Georgia to recycle every water bottle and avoid using plastic straws. She even said to wear outfits because “it’s okay for Instagram to see it twice.”


Cami Sockhow said it's the little things like wearing outfits twice that spark the start of the change to become more sustainable.Sockhow says " We have to realize now as students before it's too late that sustainability is more than just recycling. We need to reduce, reuse, and then recycle."

Rhoad said “College kids need to realize that every little effort they make has a positive effect on the ecosystem and the economy around them.”




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