Maybe you’ve heard of No-Shave November, during which facial hair becomes a symbol of support for men’s health awareness.

Well, at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, mustache awareness faces competition this month from No Waste November, a series of events dedicated instead to environmental health — specifically curtailing how much waste goes to the Lewiston landfill, and broadly cultivating sustainable waste-disposal habits.

Designed by the student EcoRepos, this poster says what’s in store during No Waste November, including the Trashion Show on Nov. 15.

Featuring a “waste audit” on Nov. 12 and culminating on the 15th with the ever-popular Trashion Show, No Waste November is brought to you by Dining Services, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ sustainability office, and that office’s student EcoReps.

Held in Commons’ Fireplace Lounge, a seven-hour clothing swap kicked off the series on Nov. 6. The idea, of course, was that students would bring in unwanted garments and, hopefully, take away new-to-them items that struck their fancy.

The holy grail of wardrobe optimization was an important impetus, but the swap also likely diverted a big box of idle apparel from the waste stream, as leftovers from the event will make an intermediate stop at the Trashion Show for further swappage and then end up at Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

Perhaps most important, though, the swap also called attention to the stunning amount of usable clothing that gets thrown away, and to the overall environmental impacts of the fashion industry.

“It’s kind of remarkable how much pollution comes out of it,” said Madeline McGonagle ’18 of Concord, N.H. She and Sophia Thayer ’18 of West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, both EcoReps, organized the swap.

In a 2016 article, reckoned that Americans toss out 14 million tons of clothing annually, or 80 pounds per person. The magazine noted that in 2012, 84 percent of unwanted clothes went into either an incinerator or a landfill.

“You know I love a good purple!” says Saleha Belgaumi ’18 of Karachi, Pakistan, as she chooses a shirt from the clothing swap in the Fireplace Lounge in Commons on Nov. 6. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

One factor driving this tidal wave of garments is the “fast fashion” industry, which, in conjunction with the digital acceleration of shopping habits, has deranged the traditional fashion calendar. The two traditional fashion seasons, fall-winter and spring-summer, have given way to a barrage of “micro-seasons.” (As many as 52, according to the .)

“That means you’re constantly buying and discarding clothing,” said Tom Twist, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ sustainability manager. “It’s pretty ridiculous.

“I don’t think a lot of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students fall into that trap — they’re generally more thoughtful than that,” Twist said. (Three EcoReps that we talked to prefer to buy second-hand clothing.)

“This has been on the students’ radar for a while, and they’ve been looking for practical ways to do something about it,” Twist said. In fact, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has held a number of clothing swaps, although the Nov. 6 event was the first structured as a daylong drop-in.

The busiest times for the swap, naturally, were around lunch and dinner. We dropped in around 1 p.m., when Thayer and another EcoRep, Adair Andre ’18 of Edina, Minn., were staffing the event.  (There are 32 EcoReps this year, an all-time high.)

By then there was a lull and we got to admire two of Andre’s finds, a scoop-neck sweater in soft gray cotton and a blue blouse that’s 100 percent, as the auctioneers say, in the silk.

Out of the bag

A waste audit held in 2009. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Up next for No Waste November is the waste audit on Nov. 12. EcoReps will visit ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ 10 largest student residences and take away three bags of trash and three of recycling from each dorm. Sorting and weighing the contents, they’ll do an analysis to better understand residents’ habits and, by extension, the efficacy of college efforts to encourage more and better recycling.

“It’s going to be right in front of Commons,” said Hadley Moreau ’19 of Falmouth, Maine, one of the EcoReps organizing the audit. “The idea of that is to raise publicity — people walking into Commons will see us doing it.”

Twist hopes to find some functional answers in the 60 bags of refuse that the EcoReps will pick through. He’s wondering, for example, about the habit-forming power of waste curtailment measures taken last winter — a drive to replace paper coffee cups with personal reusable containers, and the deployment of waste receptacles that, among other refinements, added composting to the disposal choices.

“Are our efforts working — are we seeing an increase in recycling, based on all the marketing that we’re trying to do?” he wonders. “How much of the residence trash could have been recycled or composted? Are there things that we could be capturing that we’re not?”

Hopefully the audit itself will further those goals. As an EcoRep, Moreau has given sustainability presentations to many first-year students —work that has taught her that not everyone knows about practices that others take for granted.

Citing Maine’s returnable beverage-container program, she pointed out that people from other states “don’t know what returnables are. And some people don’t know what compost is. People come from different backgrounds.”

Goggles in hand, Elise Krims ’16 hits the 2015 Trashion Show runway wearing Kevin Tejada’s design “Phoenix Rising From the Ashes.” Tejada said of his creation, “If Barbarella and Madonna had a child, this would be her.” (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

She says, “I think environmentally conscious people sometimes assume that other people know more than they actually do.”

Finally, taking refuse from thrown-away to runway, the Trashion Show follows the Harvest Dinner on Nov. 15. Andre and Thayer, behind-the-scenes veterans of the show, have fond memories of this fashion extravaganza where the couture is fabricated from discarded teabag packets, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish bags, foil yogurt seals, magazines, coffee cups, and other salvage from the dustbin.

Thayer recalled a Miley Cyrus-style bubble miniskirt crafted from paper cups, and both students hailed the designs of Kevin Teijada ’17 as the ultimate in Trashion style — “amazing,” as Andre said, citing the 2015 ensemble “Phoenix Rising From the Ashes” that Tejada styled for model Elise Krims ’16. The outfit featured a bustier, collar, and goggles made from beverage cans, as well as fringed wings, repurposed from videotape, trailing from Krims’ otherwise bare arms.

While the basic spectacle will remain the same this year, the Trashion Show program will be tweaked a bit. The show will be held as usual amidst a cornucopia of desserts in the Gray Athletic Building, but Dining Services has taken steps to make the dessert service refuse-free. (Because who can refuse a delicious dessert?)

And Thayer noted that the EcoReps will strive to get the waste-reduction message of the show to a larger audience for a longer time. “We’re focused on events with impact,” she said — “continuing impact.”

If you’re asking people to behave sustainably and sort their trash as they throw it away, it’s only fair to make their choices as clear as possible.

“Apparently people decide where they’re going to put their trash when they’re about five to 10 feet away from the bins,” says Tom Twist, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ sustainability manager.

Accordingly, in collaboration with the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications design team, Twist has come up with a standardized configuration for waste-sorting stations that’s intended to guide people as they unburden themselves of Snickers wrappers, paper napkins, apple cores, Sanpellegrino cans, etc.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Sustainability Manager Tom Twist poses next to a Pettengill Hall waste-sorting station. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

New compartmented bins in about 30 public locations around ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ are color-coded and marked with signage that, Twist says, is “readily visible from afar.” The signage relies on icons, along with text, to indicate what goes where — recyclables, compostables, returnables, fodder for the landfill, etc.

Fabricated from a material made mostly of recycled plastic milk jugs, the bins are custom-built for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ by a Wisconsin company, Max-R. “I think we have some of the nicest-looking, the most functional bins I’ve ever seen,” Twist says.

The redesign is part of an effort, begun a few years ago under Twist’s predecessor, to get the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community to recycle more of its refuse. As a percentage of the overall waste stream, “our recycling rate is 34 percent,” Twist says, while an estimated 75 percent of all refuse is actually recyclable.

“We’re trying to come up with a reasonable goal for the college,” he explains. “We’re kicking around the idea of getting to 50 percent recycling in the next several years.”

Four ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ EcoReps — Isa Moise ’19 of Mount Vernon, N.Y., Beanie O’Shea ’18 of Somers, Conn., Hannah Slattery ’18 of Gilford, N.H., and George Fiske ’19 of West Hartford, Conn. — show off one of the college’s new waste-sorting stations, in Pettengill Hall. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Recycling is a question of folding green as much as sustainability green, Twist adds. It costs ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ about half as much to dispose of the recyclable portion of its refuse as it does to send non-recyclables to the Lewiston landfill.

In fiscal year 2016, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ paid about $60–80 for each of the 267 tons of trash that went to the landfill. In contrast, it cost about $35 per ton for the 138 tons of recycling that went to Casella Recycling Service.

“It’s not that people are intentionally not sorting their stuff,” says Olivia LaMarche ’20 of Lynnfield, Mass. She’s involved in the waste-stream program as a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ EcoRep. “It’s just that they’re really not sure what can be recycled, or they’re not positive whether a bin is for recycling or trash.”

The new system is designed to minimize such uncertainty. Hence the standardized bin colors and icons, and the distilling of the icons for maximum clarity.

“We have thought about everything down to the minutest detail, in terms of social engineering,” says Twist.

The new waste-receptacle system broadens compost collection beyond Dining Services for the first time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For instance, “we intentionally made the recycling compartment of the bins much larger than the trash side, to send a visual cue that you are supposed to be recycling more than you are throwing out.

“We changed the ‘Trash’ sign to ‘Landfill,’ to get people to pause and think.”

One of the most significant changes with the new system is that it captures food waste — and, perhaps surprisingly, paper napkins and paper towels — for composting.

Of course, the tray return line in Commons and a sorting station in the Bobcat Den have diverted food waste from the landfill for years, but food discarded elsewhere on campus did go to the landfill. Now, thanks to the new sorting stations, much of it can be recovered for composting.

Twist explains, “We’re within six miles of southern Maine’s largest industrial composter,” We Compost It!, which has a processing facility in Auburn. That firm has a pickup service that, similar to non-food ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ recycling, ends up costing about half of landfill disposal. (In FY 2016, the college sent 131 tons of material to be composted or fed to pigs at a local farm.)

A disposal station in the Pettengill Hall lobby is, if you will, the flagship of the compost-ready waste-bin fleet. “That was the first location that had compost collection outside of Dining Services,” Twist says. “It was kind of a nerve-wracking thing to start, since it had been tried before and failed.

“There are few things that go south faster than poorly planned food waste collection.”

“There are few things that go south faster than poorly planned food waste collection.”

Another major advance in the new waste-disposal platform is the capacity to separate liquids from the rest of the refuse — and contain them neatly. This is accomplished with bins that have funnels inset into the top that feed watertight containers, which are emptied down the drain.

Segregating liquids is important for a few different reasons. For one thing, paper or plastic that has gotten wet can’t be recycled. In other words, a quarter-full cup of chai dropped into a recycling bin, says LaMarche, “just ruins the recycling.”

Another reason is aesthetic: It’s simply discouraging to the custodians to deal with trash bags leaking old coffee or milk into the refuse bin or across a freshly mopped floor.

The new waste stations’ liquid-collection system makes life nicer for custodians and helps keep stray liquids from spoiling recyclables. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In fact, says Twist, the new waste-handling system makes life easier in a variety of ways for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ grounds and custodial crews, the folks on the front lines of refuse collection. “A lot of times it’s just been a pain the neck for them. We’re trying to streamline that, to make it really easy.”

For example, the new bins open in the front for changing the bags. That’s an ergonomic improvement over the old bins, which opened at the top, making custodians lift full bags of trash straight up and over the bin.

“We put casters on them so you can roll them from place to place to clean the floor,” Twist adds. And color-coding extends to the trash bags, to ensure that the refuse remains properly sorted after they’ve been removed from the bins.

With the Max-R sorting stations installed only in public spaces on campus, the new system isn’t comprehensive. In the dorms, especially, a variety of sorting facilities still prevails and there’s a ways to go on upping the percentage of recycling.

But the public stations have been working well, says LaMarche, whose contributions to the effort included obtaining grant money to expand compost collection.

She says, “I’ve learned that every person can have an impact. And so just doing what we’re doing, trying to educate students about what happens to waste, where it goes, where to put their waste — every student we reach in some way can actually make a big difference in the long run.”

Pettengill Hall, where the waste collection stations made their campus debut, is home to several of them. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)