UK Dining and Green Tree Plastics Create 100 Percent Recycled Bench for a Cleaner Future

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 28, 2016) — Today, March 28, University of Kentucky Dining and UK students will see the results of their efforts from collections of their plastic lids over the past several months. Throughout February and March, UK promoted waste reduction activities across campus through its lid collection competition — “Blazer's Call to Battle.” Students and staff supported their favorite on-campus dining units by collecting plastic lids and caps that would be used for the production of a recycled bench.

Each week, victory was rewarded to the dining venue with the highest weight of collected plastics. Every dining unit across campus participated and contributed to the reduction of UK Dining’s waste stream.

Green Tree Plastics (GTP) has transformed the recycled plastic into a recycled bench. The bench will be presented to the UK Early Childhood Lab on April 4.

According to UK Sustainability Coordinator Elizabeth Ferguson, UK has redirected more than 400 pounds of waste to be repurposed into durable product by Green Tree Plastics (GTP) since 2015. Since its establishment in 2004, GTP has recycled and repurposed more than 15 million pounds of plastic waste.

UK Dining has plans to continue its partnership with GTP to create more benches for campus. UK Dining hopes to encourage more student participation with continuous contests and events dedicated to reducing the university’s waste reduction rates through 2016.

According to M.K. Cole, UK Dining senior operations director, the world produces more than 300 million metric tons of plastic each year. The majority of these plastics are directed to landfills where they can take more than 1 million years to decompose.

Such a slow decomposition rate reduces the plastic to smaller pieces that could eventually contaminate groundwater systems. “In a sense,” Cole notes, “lid and cap waste can negatively impact the Earth for centuries to come.”

For more information on how to get involved, contact UK Dining sustainability assistant, Elizabeth Ferguson at eafe224@uky.edu.

UK is the University for Kentucky. At UK, we are educating more students, treating more patients with complex illnesses and conducting more research and service than at any time in our 150-year history. To read more about the UK story and how you can support continued investment in your university and the Commonwealth, go to: uky.edu/uk4ky. #uk4ky #seeblue

MEDIA CONTACT: Blair Hoover, 859-257-6398; blair.hoover@uky.edu