CRAP: noun – refuse; rubbish; junk; litter. (Dictionary.com v1.1)

No-one likes crap. Well, okay, some folk do, but you’ll have to read a different publication to learn more about those kinds of folk! Here at the CSI, we’re talking about that other metaphorical crap, stuff that we don’t need, stuff that really doesn’t improve the quality of our life, stuff that in fact costs us time to deal with and actually costs us a surprising amount of money. Not to mention the cost to the natural environment in which we all live.

What we know as garbage is part of the story, of course, but there is, as ever, more to it than that. When a resource is used once and not recycled, an opportunity is wasted to have gained more value from that resource – that’s crap. When energy is used but actually serves no purpose – that’s crap. When food is grown, packaged, shipped, unpacked, prepared, served and then partially eaten before the remainder being sent to landfill – that’s a whole lot of crap, when you look back ‘up’ the chain which brought the food to the eater.

How about those ‘free’ knives, forks and spoons that are available every day to cafeteria users on campus. Think they’re actually free? Think again. The food service provider pays for them, and the cost is bundled into that of food in the cafeteria. So the more plastic cutlery is used, the more the food costs. It’s the same with the paper napkins, paper doughnut bags and disposable coffee cups. It’s the same with lights and appliances being left on but not being used. It’s the same with printing on just one side of a sheet of paper – or printing when we don’t even need to. It all gets rolled into your student fees one way or another – don’t think that it doesn’t. Hauling crap away from the college – to be landfilled or recycled – costs the college, which means it costs students. Do we really need all this crap?

So how do we go about cutting the crap on the St. Lawrence College campus? Well, like most things, it starts ‘at home’, by changing some of our own habits:

• Use a reusable or travel mug – you actually get a discount on your Tim’s if you use one!

• Decline the paper bag for your donut if you have a spare hand – or bring a container for it;

• Bring your own cutlery with which to eat your lunch – this is a really easy one;

• Set your printer setting default to double-sided printing – you can always change it when you really do need it single-sided;

• Use a refillable water container and take advantage of the water fountains on campus;

• Say no to a receipt for your cash at the ATM;

• Carefully sorting what garbage we do create so as to maximise what is recycled.

The Campus Sustainability Initiative is focusing on solid waste reduction across the campus this year, and is in the process of auditing all the college’s processes to discover how much waste is being created, identify opportunities to reduce this volume and help the college community to move towards a culture of zero-waste. The most successful enterprises – and individuals – are those that, just like nature, waste nothing.

WASTE: Any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value (Taichi Ohno, 1998)

If you’d like to learn more, or discuss ‘cutting the crap’ with interesting and concerned people, contact the Campus Sustainability Initiative at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or find the Facebook group CSI@SLC. They’ll soon be on the web, too!