It’s a Connecticut higher education garbage plan with more than one goal.
To cut expenses and to enhance sustainability efforts, UConn is asking faculty, staff, and administrators to either empty their own trash, or to give up their trash can altogether and put garbage in shared bins, according to Connecticut’s premier university.
The exact savings for asking employees to pitch in like this is not clear, but the university did say that UConn adjusted “the scope of certain custodial services at the Storrs campus, including cleaning schedules and waste disposal” and is saving $131,000 month, or $1.57 million per year, by restructuring that contract.
The contract adjustment started in September, according to the university.
Additionally, “UConn made adjustments starting last August to custodial services in office spaces across the Storrs campus to enhance operational efficiency and maintain financial responsibility,” according to a spokesperson.
In cases where the trash receptacles haven’t been removed, the faculty, staff, and administrators “are now asked to empty their office receptacles into centrally located larger bins nearby, usually in hallways or other common spaces,” the spokesperson told the Courant. “One of the changes involved asking employees to start emptying their office trash bins into larger receptacles centrally located nearby, usually in hallways or other common spaces.”
“These changes are a response to university-wide budget reductions and are designed to preserve essential services while focusing resources where they are needed most. Similar cost-saving measures have already been implemented at our regional campuses,” the UConn spokesperson said.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget would reduce General Fund support for the University of Connecticut and its regional campuses from $268.2 million this fiscal year to $253.3 million in FY 2027, the CT Mirror reports. This would provide only about 85% of the support the university’s Board of Trustees is seeking.
Further, regarding the trash bins, UConn also “recently began moving individual bins out of faculty, staff, and administrative offices, reducing the potential for odors and insect/rodent activity to develop if food products are left in the trash cans over time,” the spokesperson said. The larger receptacles remain in hallways and common areas for everyone’s use, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the practice of removing the trash receptacles “was already in place in the facilities and public safety complexes, along with the John J. Budds administrative building. It was expanded to academic, office, and administrative buildings.”
Residence halls are not included in the measure, the spokesperson said.
Ambar Sengupta, UConn’s head of the Department of Mathematics, told the Daily Campus news that “some of his concerns about the removal of trash cans from offices were addressed by a discussion he had with” Vice President of Facility Services and University Planning Eric Kruger.
Sengupta told the Daily Campus that he does not use the trash cans and understands the cost issue, but “he is overall more understanding than most faculty members about the decision to take away trash cans, whom he said are pretty upset. He added that he’s heard skepticism from other faculty members about how centralized waste collection could save UConn money.”
The university also noted it “is not unique in this approach,” to the trash removal.
“Scores of higher education institutions, state and local government agencies, and other entities nationwide have adopted centralized waste collection over the last 10-plus years,” the spokesperson said.
“The changes are among many actions that UConn has enacted across its campuses to cut costs, improve efficiency, preserve essential services, and focus resources where they are most needed in response to university-wide budget reductions,” the spokesperson said. “ It has the additional benefit of enhancing UConn’s sustainability efforts, reducing the replacement costs of disposable liners.”
The spokesperson noted that “cost breakdowns have not been developed specifically for the savings associated with the centralized trash collection change, since it is part of the broader $1.57 million savings achieved by the contract revision.”
The link the university provided was to a business called Busch Systems, which reports that it did a study, “Indoor Waste & Diversion at Colleges and Universities,” in collaboration with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, College & University Recycling Coalition, Zero Waste Campus Council, National Wildlife Federation and Campus Race to Zero Waste.
The report, done with a survey of campus sustainability managers, “shows that a growing number of schools are embracing practices like removing waste bins from classrooms and shifting responsibility from custodians to staff and faculty to empty personal waste from office workstations. And the changes are making a difference, improving waste diversion and reducing operational costs.”
The report notes that centralized collections in general refer to a way “to deploy a relatively small number of mid-size waste collection bins (15 to 50 gallons) to strategic “centralized” locations, where individuals are expected to carry and discard their personal waste.”
In two examples used in the project, the report notes, at offices and staff workstations, classrooms and meeting rooms, custodial staff who “might previously have emptied the small waste baskets placed by an office desk or inside a classroom are now assigned to only service the larger centralized bins located in common areas such as hallways, break rooms or lobby areas.”
In the report, bins were “removed entirely from classrooms, and depending on a school’s particular arrangement, deskside locations as well. Students, staff and faculty are instructed in each instance to discard their waste in the centralized bins placed nearby.”
“Centralized collection arrangements flip this script. Asking people to carry their waste to centralized bins gives them an opportunity to reflect on how sorting rules apply to the item(s) they’re discarding,” the report says. “Unlike the small waste baskets in a classroom or office, the centralized bins they’re directed to are likelier to have restrictive openings and signage that further improve sorting accuracy. Operationally, the labor previously dedicated to emptying a large network of bins can be repurposed to other cleaning tasks, or in many cases, to servicing expanded collection options for compostable food waste. Eliminating unnecessary bins also means reducing the number and cost of plastic bags needed to line them.”
The report also noted that, as centralized collection arrangements “require changing routines,” objections can be raised and there is “potential for institutional resistance. For individual staff and faculty, being told to carry their waste to bins in a common area challenges long-held expectations about convenience and housecleaning responsibilities. Though experience shows that people adapt and come to accept handling their personal waste, without careful planning, complaints from even a handful of people can give campus leadership pause and stall the implementation of a new collection arrangement.”
In a sample of schools that eliminated custodial deskside service, the survey “asked whether the introduction of the new system generated significant resistance from any of several key stakeholder groups. Not surprisingly, 75% pointed to their experience with opposition from the staff and faculty instructed to handle their own waste. The most commonly cited objection was the belief that professional staff’s time was too valuable to spend on a custodial task. In other cases, concerns about germs or odor and pests were raised. Several schools mentioned staff and faculty fears that service cutbacks would result in custodians losing their jobs,” the report says.
However, the report notes, “multiple survey respondents emphasized that a relatively small number of people were vocally protesting the changes while most office workers were on board with them.” One university “noted that complaints came from existing office locations where deskside custodial service was discontinued but not from new buildings opening with self-service as the default,” the report said.