With practiced ease, Céline Knubben, Zero Waste project leader with waste processor PreZero, holds a large garbage bag upside down to empty it. Standing around the table are various TU/e employees – all of them involved in sustainability, either personally or professionally – wearing heavy-duty orange gloves. We wait for Knubben's start sign, then everyone reaches for the mountain, and the rapid categorizing of waste begins. “The other day we found a half-full carton of Chinese takeaway. Not what you wanna see so early in the morning,” one of the team recalls, wrinkling his nose.

We are standing in the Market Hall in MetaForum, where the contents of a wheelie bin are being analyzed this morning. It's a bin for non-recyclable waste and it stands in Atlas, the last of the eighteen TU/e locations selected. Repeatedly in recent weeks, you could have found Knubben in the Market Hall, standing over a waste mountain and often accompanied by the management staffer for the relevant location. That the crowd gathered at the sorting table today is a little bigger than usual is something Knubben can only applaud. “Reducing the waste stream is something you have to do together. These baseline measurements are the first step towards that goal. We want to know exactly what the non-recyclable waste includes. Are there, for instance, differences to be seen between the locations? In a lab different things are thrown away than in a canteen. Once we've carried out a thorough analysis, we can create a step-by-step plan for separating waste even better than we currently do, or perhaps for adding a new waste stream.”

Where does this potato chip bag go?

After a flying start, the waste at the table is being steadily sorted. One corner has been reserved for garden, fruit & veg waste. As well as many teabags, half a stick of bread and a heap of paprika-flavor potato chips are lying here. We have a pile of plastic waste, a heap of tissues – a bumper crop thanks to this being the flu season – and a corner for paper. Strangely enough, the amount of non-recyclable waste isn't at all excessive.

And just like at home, when you stand there, item in hand, feeling puzzled, so here too there are moments when the correct sort isn't completely clear. Tiny Poppe, part of the TU/e campaign Let's Go Zero team, together with Bregje Portier and Martine de Graaff, is waving an empty potato chip bag around. “Does this go with PMD - the recyclable plastics, metals and cartons - or non-recyclables?” Knubben guides us through every sorting quandary and explains that there's no easy answer for the potato chip bag. “It's made of what's called a laminate material, in this case aluminum and plastic, which we can't recycle. It's okay to put it in with the PMD waste because it can be separated out. But since that route means adding an extra logistical step to get it to the waste incinerator, I prefer to put it in with the non-recyclables.”

Waste-free university

To reduce the waste stream at TU/e and increase sustainability on the campus, the campaign Let’s Go Zero was started in 2021. Now, students and employees can leave their sorted trash in special Tulip garbage bins, to be found in every building; disposable coffee cups can no longer be found on campus; and more and more catering outlets at TU/e are running the food waste app Too Good To Go. But we want to become even greener, stresses Bregje Portier. “Our aim is to be a waste-free university in 2030. That means no more non-recyclable waste. And that's why we want to see waste prevented wherever possible, otherwise reused and recycled. Reduce, reuse, recycle! Our new waste processor PreZero is going to help us, and that's why we're here at this table together.”

There are a number of important aspects to becoming waste free as a university, says Knubben, each of which will be examined in turn in the coming months. “Circular purchasing plays a big role; which materials are entering at the front end? We want to use data to gain greater insight into the whole chain, ultimately linking all the various inputs. Then, suppose a department were to throw out a certain material, another department could use it. For the rest, we're looking at the back-end waste streams and investigating where recycling can be improved.”