About us
The role of the Waste and Recycling Office and the services it provides.
Background
With almost 8,000 staff and over 28,000 students involved in a wide range of research and teaching activities, the University of Edinburgh is one of the larger producers of waste in Edinburgh and produces a variety of waste and recycling types.
What do we do?
The Waste & Environment Team is part of Estates Operations within Estates and Buildings.
We are responsible for the management of all University waste and recycling. We do this by procuring, managing and monitoring centralised contracts for our General waste and recycling streams and for high risk or hazardous streams (e.g. Hazardous Waste, Healthcare & ABP waste, WEEE waste).
It is also to provide guidance, advice and support to the University Community to ensure that legislation is complied with. See attached "Buyer's Guide" for some of the aspects of Supplier management that we cover.
Finally we have a responsibility to steer the University community towards the targets approved by the University Court.
What is waste management?
Waste management is the collection, transport, processing*, recycling or disposal, and monitoring of ALL waste materials. These can involve solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances.
* We hand over the processing part to contractors we have procured. However if we segregate waste on site that is part of the processing procedure.
Targets
The University is committed to continuous improvement of waste management practices and a reduction in the proportion of waste sent to landfill. In order to do this targets are set and revised as appropriate by SEAG-Operations.
Our current targets are to increase recycling by 3% annually, to reduce waste to landfill by 3% annually and to send zero biodegradable waste to landfill by 2020.
So, how are we doing?
We are doing a good job in continuing to reduce our impact on this front. In 2010-11, we only sent around 740 tonnes of waste to landfill or incinerator and recycled over 1600 tonnes (that's over 67.5% recycling).
How we do this?
Find out more about what and how we recycle at the University by checking "Our Approach" (linked below). You are probably recycling far more than you realise already.
This article was published on Jun 25, 2012