Our friends over at Green and Growing recently created this useful Ultimate Recycling Guide - and even allowed us to contribute! Check it out here ..read more

Come Sort Trash with Us! RSVP at bit.ly/sortwithRR And don't forget to bring your friends! Share this graphic on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Last time we sorted... ...The trash was composed largely of paper, rigid plastic, and organics. We found quite a few paper napkins, and a bunch of abandoned sushi.  The RR Team has been hard at work... We're building an app! In the very near future, Return Recycling's rad waste characterization process will be made easy and accessible to anyone interested in seeing what's in their school's trash!   If you're interested in using an app to ..read more

*|MC:SUBJECT|*    Surprise! We're Digging Through Trash. Again. Last Friday, we had our very first Sorting Event of the year! We collected some insightful data on the waste being tossed in NYU's Silver Academic Center lounges that will be added to our data treasure trove of the past two years. This database serves as the first of many to come that can be used to investigate waste habits and flows at universities and beyond! To learn more, visit our website. Here are some results from today's research ..read more

Aryn and I spent the weekend in Durham, NH at the Post Landfill Action Network’s Students for Zero Waste Conference. While we were there we met and bonded with other waste nerds like ourselves. Although we were there to host a workshop on “Students Starting Up” we learned more about the broad variety of concepts that are encompassed in the zero waste movement than we could have brought ourselves. It was truly a remarkable experience—and something I’d definitely recommend folks looking to learn more about campus zero-waste efforts go to next year. CHEERS to PLAN— we’re looking forward to #SZW20 ..read more

Yesterday morning, a few members of our team got up bright and early to run through all the logistics of sorting through our trash for the first time this semester. We got together our bags, our bins, our scales, and our bagels (of course), and went to work! We dug through three bags to make sure we worked out all the kinks of sorting (hidden spreadsheet glitches, brain cobwebs, etc.) and eased back into our good old trash habits. It felt real good to get back in the groove - I even missed smelling like garbage juice a little bit? Though we didn’t go through our standard volume of waste, we d ..read more

  "The amount of paper used in the United States in one day is shocking. Although not all of this paper is wasted, it is safe to say that some is. It is important for everybody to start thinking about how to reduce, re-use and recycle products. There are a variety of activities that everyonecan start doing to decrease the amount of wasted paper. Next time you are about to throw something away, ask yourself: Can this be recycled or re-used?  This infographic was made by Esker and details the amount of paper used in the United States, daily ..read more

Photo by Moonrose Cheng Earlier this month Return Recycling was honored to receive an NYU President's Service Award. These awards go to individuals and organizations who have shown a commitment to community service and civic engagement on campus and in local communities. As a small group of students working to dig through trash once a week, sometimes it can be hard to see the bigger picture or that what we are doing matters. However, every day we get more data, it becomes more organized and our outreach grows in NYU community. It means so much that our university acknowledged our work and und ..read more

Next Thursday, January 21 at 6:00 there will be a panel discussion about a recent NYC pilot program in which post-consumer glass is recycled into concrete, hosted by the Urban Green Council (register here).  According to Urban Green’s (cleverly titled) preview article, Sims Recycling Facility teamed up with Building Product Ecosystems (BPE) to figure out how to use the overabundance of post-consumer glass productively. Replacing the cement used in concrete - which is usually created with fly ash byproduct - with ground up glass presented itself as an excellent option. The recycled glass w ..read more

by Moonrose Cheng About 4 years ago, I bought this product called the Waka Waka Power. And now I'm going to review it! The Waka Waka Power is a solar charger that includes 2 ports: a USB and a micro USB. not only is it a charger, it's also a flashlight. The flashlight can be turned on to various levels of brightness, from dim to very bright. I find the flashlight function to be quite useful.  Because it has a stand, the flashlight can be used as a small lamp. So if you like to pretend you are camping and want to read a book, this is great for that purpose. It's also good for actual campi ..read more

by Moonrose Cheng I happened to come across this YouTube video talking about this really neat concept: pencils that turn into plants! The idea is that once you sharpen a pencil into a stub, which can't be used anymore, you just plant it into a pot of soil. There are seeds in a capsule at the top of the pencil, replacing where an eraser would normally be. There are different types of seeds, like herbs, vegetables, and flowers in the capsules. Once you plant them into a pot, I suppose the capsule will biodegrade and allow the seeds to sprout.  However, you could also reduce your pencil was ..read more