***The Penn State Zero Waste Conference scheduled to take place Sept. 15 -18 at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel on the University Park campus has been cancelled due to low enrollment. Conference planners hope to take many of the presentations and make them available in a future webinar.***
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Not only is recycling healthy for the environment, it’s good for the bottom line.
At Penn State, more than $800,000 has been raised for scholarship and philanthropy by selling recyclables collected on campus, according to Al Matyasovsky, the supervisor of Central Support Services in Penn State's Office of Physical Plant (OPP).
“We market recyclables as feedstock for industry or sell them at venues,” Matyasovsky said. “We have gotten pretty resourceful at finding partners and markets for these collected, and rather diverse, materials. Other universities look at Penn State for advice and direction.”
Recyclables and reusable waste specifically fund two scholarships – the Newspaper Readership Scholarship from recycled newspapers and the Environmental Resource Management Scholarship from recycled scrap metal. Money is also raised for the Centre County United Way and the Four Diamonds Fund.
Best practices for monetizing waste is one of many topics of discussion at the Zero Waste Conference, slated for Sept. 15 to 18 at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel on the University Park campus.