Knox College
IN-1: Innovation 1

Knox College has implemented a zero-waste move initiative, which was piloted in 2014 with the move of eight offices into the newly renovated Alumni Hall building. The move of these eight offices, comprising 45 employees, and the cascading move of 30 additional employees and programs into vacated spaces, was conducted with maximum internal coordination and material recovery so as to produce no more landfill waste than would have been produced through ordinary daily operations. Additionally, this initiative involved the purchase of no new boxes. Over a thousand boxes were required for the progressive move, and all were re-appropriated from campus offices that receive packages, most notably dining services and the C-store.

The school never rented a dumpster or increased its waste pickup schedule throughout this internal move. An estimated three tons of materials were recovered during the purge of vacated office and storage spaces, through the recycling program and two on-campus sharing programs. Careful efforts were made to provide receptacles for mixed recyclables, cardboard, office paper, books and bound materials, spent electronics, and other recyclable materials. Besides the items collected for recycling, about a ton of the recovered materials included reusable office supplies and household items, which were incorporated into the Office of Sustainability's "Office Supply Share" and "Free Store", respectively. These services keep usable resources circulating within the campus community, and by consolidating them in designated areas, facilitate access by offices and individuals in need of specific supplies. A conservative estimate indicates that 1500 mid-sized cardboard boxes were temporarily diverted from the outgoing recycling stream of the cafeteria and convenience store, used multiple times throughout the move, and then returned to the compactor to be ultimately recycled. Considering that "traditional" moving boxes might otherwise have been purchased for the endeavor, the cost savings and reductions in natural resource extraction associated with this move are significant.