Stinky project helps students make point

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Trash Audit

Members of the student based group, Alliance of Planet Earth, hosted a trash audit Monday at the College of Charleston. Their goal was to raise awareness about waste on campus by displaying all the garbage that was thrown away over a four-day period in campus trash containers. The students also sorted through the garbage for items that could be recycled in an effort to show how the amount could be reduced.

A dozen College of Charleston students went Dumpster diving on campus Monday to make a point: There's a whole lot of useful stuff that gets thrown away.

It's a gross job. Maggots, bugs and the stench inside the dumpsters were the price members of Alliance for Planet Earth paid to get at recyclable materials.

"The smell is definitely horrendous," junior Brian Vanderschauw said.

And that's not all. "It's dark and sticky," senior Lesley Laudman said.

While talking about what to get for lunch, the students wore rubber gloves and sifted through piles of sour-smelling trash at a heavily trafficked area between the Robert Scott Small Building and Maybank Hall. There was a lot of plastic and paper and a collection of oddities. Two bags of pennies, a toilet, what appeared to be the long, black legs of a Halloween spider costume, a gum ball machine, unopened food and "vomit bags" were among the more unusual items found in 10 dumpsters at the college, the students said.

The Dumpster diving started at midnight. "It's a really huge job," said Suzanne Lee, a senior. The trash was hauled in two rental trucks, she said. Early Monday afternoon, what the students dug out of the dumpsters was in a long pile of bags guarded by the cougar statue near Calhoun Street. More than 100 pounds of aluminum had been sorted from the debris. The alliance's last "trash audit" at the college in 2007 resulted in it earning $750 for the recyclables salvaged from the trash containers, Vanderschauw said.

Hand-made signs scrawled on cardboard were posted at the trash piles. One of the placards noted that the average American produces 7.5 pounds of garbage daily. Lee said the college could stop using foam cups to cut down on trash. "Look at how much waste we produce. We're hoping people maybe change their ways," she said.

Reach Prentiss Findlay at 937-5711 or pfindlay@postandcourier.com.