Macalester College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Campus Race to Zero Waste is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling and waste diversion programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities including students, faculty and staff. Over a 10-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate. Macalester regularly participates in the campus race to zero waste. As part of the programming of the campaign, the Macalester Sustainability Office organizes events, articles, and additional outreach materials to promote awareness of zero waste efforts on campus with staff, faculty, students, alumni and families associated with Macalester. For example, as part of this campaign Macalester Sustainability set up educational booths and givaway tables full of Macalester SWAG that wound up in the campus free swap. Students, faculty, staff, alumni and families all utilized these booths. During the 2023 competition, Macalester came in first in three categories of the small school division: Overall Diversion Rates, Food Organics Diversion, and Zero Waste

Throughout the months of February and March each year, Macalester uses the Campus Race to Zero Waste competition as a time to put the pedal to the metal on promoting zero waste goals. During this month events like a free clothing swap, waste sorts, and sustainable skills shares are hosted to raise attention to the competition and encourage students to put forth their best waste sorting efforts.
In 2023 students also organized to track dormroom waste production and toured the Eureka Recycling facility in St. Paul. During the campaign, waste diversion data is collected weekly across campus. This allows the Sustainability Office to provide accurate weekly data and monitor waste diversion efforts in near real-time. A major positive impact of the campaign was been the opportunity it provides to engage a wide cross-section of campus. Participating in different categories over the last competition allowed the Macalester Sustainability office to strengthen relationships throughout campus. For example, the office worked with the campus IT department which catalyzed efforts to organize and track e-waste recycling on campus. The office also worked with the Athletic center on campus to track waste diversion and promote the campus free swap during a basketball came. It has also improved efforts to track daily food waste on campus.

In October 2019, the Sustainability Office and Health and Wellness jointly launched a SustainaCup program to distribute menstrual cups. SustainaCup is a program designed to improve menstrual sustainability through alleviating the cost burden of periods, reducing stigma, offering gender-neutral and discreet products, and ensuring the health safety of cups. The cups are made available in the Health and Wellness office as well as through Mailing Services. The program will be continued in the fall with the help of OrganiCup, the menstrual cup provider, which will now be distributing free menstrual cups across college campuses through the Campus Cup program.

In the first two weeks of the campaign alone over 350 menstrual cups were distributed providing access to a menstrual health option to students all across campus. The Macalester student body uses an estimated 350,000 pads and tampons each year so the opportunity to reduce waste as well as cost to individuals is enormous.

https://www.macalester.edu/sustainability/sustainability-and-wellness/