There is No "Away"
Daniel has always loved being outdoors and grew up knowing he wanted to be in an environmental career. He graduated from UC Davis in environmental horticulture and worked at the City of Oakland on environmental outreach and volunteer coordination before he joined UCSF. To meet
UC’s Zero Waste by 2020 goals, he and a team of eight provide education about composting, recycling and reuse, and manage the tons of solid waste we generate annually.
What have you learned about the garbage habits of UCSF?
We are very wasteful. Even though I work in this field, I am still amazed by how much garbage we produce, much of it only used for a few seconds or minutes, like plastic bags we immediately throw away or other single-use plastics. We also see a lot of food waste and recycling in our trash bins. While it seems like there is so much awareness, we realize we can’t assume that staff understand how to properly dispose of waste (see
Learn to Sort featuring our
Zero Waste site). The biggest myth is that you “throw something away" when in fact there is no “away.” Many items sit in a landfill or end up in the ocean for eternity. These things don’t disappear.
Is there any good news?
Five years ago we generated 3,495 tons of trash, more than twice what we collect today. We are not going to solve this problem in one year, but every little bit helps. I always hear “Why does my one item matter?” You can’t think of it as one small thing, but rather that every choice you make has a good or bad consequence. It’s the same with voting; your one action matters.