Research aims to reduce waste and reuse materials

"... One more round of weighing, and then we can clean it all up." I'm very much an action researcher and an action instructor. And I really focus on sustainability issues. So that would be social issues and environmental impacts. We want to understand our contribution to climate change, our contribution to waste streams or to water issues, and we want to do something about it. The big challenge right now is that many organizations don't know how to do that. When I do my work, it is to help clarify that baseline, foundational understanding. What is the impact now? How do we change that to reduce harm, reduce impact? "We'll add it to this plastic area and it can go right there." Today, we have ten Virginia Tech students here working with Retirement Unlimited to sort through 24 hours worth of trash. They're looking to sort that into different material categories, so we can identify ways to intervene and reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills. We'll try to identify what kind of recyclable plastics are in the waste streams or metals or reusable items, and then provide instructions on how Retirement Unlimited could divert that away from the landfill, which would both save them money from waste hauling, but also to increase the sustainability of their buildings. At Virginia Tech, I was a sustainable biomaterials student, focusing on the seeking sustainable societies track sponsored by Dr. Russell. I think that Dr. Russell and her classes and her research led me entirely to this position. Not only did it give me the tools, but it gave me the access to this position. And I'm using those tools every day in my job here at Retirement Unlimited. Getting students to kind of do that dirty work, but also to be collecting data and realizing that there is science behind this, that the data is meaningful and that there's really valuable insight to come out of it. I used to work in industry for ten years and had a moment where I realized what I really wanted was to help influence and shape that next generation of leaders and decision makers to understand that their decisions really matter. Every single one of them. That's really what motivated me. One of the most important things that I try to accomplish in the classroom is helping students to see the ways in which they do have power. All of our students are amazing people, and what we need to do is ask them the right questions and invite them to think differently.