NIU Can Do 15. Reuse boxes, envelopes and packing materials.
Packaging makes up nearly one-third of the municipal waste stream in the United States.
While colleges and universities generate less packaging than the national average, significant opportunities still exist on campus to reduce the waste of re-useable boxes, envelopes, and packing material. Use food service buckets as collection containers. A substantial start-up cost of any university recycling program is the containers actually used to collect recyclable materials. Depending on the nature of the recycling program and the type of collection containers required, some programs employ re-useable plastic food buckets to collect materials for pickup. Large, five-gallon plastic food service pails with handles fill this need quite well.