PCC District Recycling Partnership

Partner: Portland Community College 

Start Date: November 2010

Duration: Through December 2011

The Portland Community College District Recycling Coordinator Partnership provides staff and experience to coordinate, support, and streamline district-wide recycling, composting, and resource conservation efforts across the all nine PCC campuses and centers. CES staff is located at the PCC Sylvania campus and works directly with the PCC Sustainability Manager and PCC Facility Management Services to develop, implement, and evaluate recycling, composting, and conservation activities district-wide.

The project staff is currently working to optimize the districts recycling system. This includes the purchase, distribution, utilization and monitoring of internal and external recycling collection systems (equipment and signage) across all PCC campuses.

Additionally, CES staff is helping to implement a pre-consumer food waste diversion program, with the use of on-sight composting and vermicomposting. The project also manages and tracks waste data, in order to evaluate recycling and food diversion system performance. They are currently working to develop and report on new tracking mechanism for PCC green house gas emissions district-wide.

CES staff participates in additional sustainability efforts including the PCC Sustainability Council and the Climate Action Plan (CAP) Consumption and Solid Waste Subcommittee. (Climate Action Plan)

Recent Accomplishments

• In February, 2012: Completion of a District-wide supply chain Economic Input-Output-Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA) for all FY 2010 purchasing data.  The EIO-LCA places a carbon-emission intensity (MTCO2e) on specific purchasing categories.  The EIO-LCA completed for FY2010 analyzed over $80.7 million dollars of college expenditures. 

  Moving forward, an EIO-LCA will be completed for seven (7) addition past FY of purchasing data to cover FY 2010 through FY 2003.  Among many uses, this information will help inform the full implementation of the new PCC Sustainable Purchasing Policy.  This will also help move the college closer to thinking about and informing their waste minimization and recycling systems as a material management issue.

• Procurement of two (2) industrial-scale vermicomposting units to augment the existing pre-consumer compost diversion project occurring at the Sylvania campus.  Each units measure 5' wide, 6' long, and 4' tall and will be placed in the Sylvania Learning Garden by summer of 2012.  The units will be used for on-site compost cultivation of pre-consumer food waste coming out of the Sylvania kitchen.  Each unit can process 75-150 lbs of organic waste per day, with a daily output of 45-90 lbs of compost.  The compost will be used by the learning garden and the PCC Grounds Department.

• Delivery of 100 new indoor and outdoor public collection containers, 620 classroom containers to all 9 campuses and centers in the summer of 2011;

• Launch of the pre-consumer food waste program at student dining food preparation kitchens on Sylvania Campus in October of 2011; and

• Development of full waste, recycling and composting tracking system for the 9 campuses and centers currently using 5 different waste haulers normalized by student enrollment and staff onsight.

• PCC District = 4 main campuses, 5 distance leaning centers, 93,000 student enrollment in 2010, 30,000 full time students, 1,500 square mile district, 5,000 full time faculty, 5th largest community college in the nation.

• Pre-consumer food waste collection program at Sylvania; diversion weights per month from beginning of pilot: October 2011: 2,050lbs; November 2011: 3,200lbs; December 2011: 2,400lbs; January 2012: 4,200lbs.

• PCC Campus Diversion Rate Averages:

*Portland Metropolitan Workforce Training Center

**Construction phase, no data available for 2009.