Recycle Bins at the Lodbell Dining Hall

As a busy graduate student, who doesn’t have much time to cook, it happens a few times during the week that I buy lunch at the Stratton student center and eat it at the 2nd floor Lodbell dining hall. As food is mostly sold in disposable containers, many recycle bins have been placed at this dining hall. However, to use these bins in the correct way has sometimes be a source of confusion for me.

In this human use analysis project, I am going to analyze how efficient the recycle bins at the Lodbell dining hall are in terms of separating recyclable, non-recyclable, and compostable trash.

How does it currently work?

It seems nice at the first look and relatively easy to recognize which bin is for what kind of trash.

There are 3 bins, namely, compost/food waste, trash, and recyling, with instructions above them. To have a better understanding of these instructions, I have included larger pictures of them below.

Users of the recycle bins

The Lodbell dining hall is used by students, faculty, and visitors with a variety of backgrounds. When we add visitors and tourists to the list of people using this dining hall it basically means everyone. The age range would be between 5 to 95 and they can be from any country. It should also be considered that many toursists don't know a single word of English.