Syd Clark (they, them) first stepped on the Beloit College campus in 2018, looked around, and thought, “this is garbage.”

It was the way the school handled the three tons of trash it produced each week that led them to this conclusion. And after landing a job as a student housekeeper, they got an up close and personal view of the situation. It was rubbish.

Every day Syd went to work, the first thing they would do was pull trash from a building. All the bags were the same color. The recyclables were contaminated. They took the bags outside to a designated area, where a grounds crew member would pick them up. That person would spend their entire day collecting trash bags and taking them to an appropriated site.

When Clark would get home, they'd see the ongoing campus gag come alive on their phone.

“The amount of photos I saw from my friends of squirrels and raccoons, like ripping up the bags and eating the trash — people sent them to each other as a little joke,” Clark said.

Funny, not funny.

“I just knew this was a not sustainable practice, but I had no idea how we could change it, or even if we could,” they said.

Clark spoke with the previous director of the facilities department and did not come away optimistic.

“I was kind of like, ‘Oh, well, I guess this is just how it is,’” they said of the practice that had been in place for 20 years.

Then, last year, they wanted to create a campus composting system as part of their environmental studies capstone project.

“(Former facilities director Robert Oehler) said, ‘It’s going to be really hard to implement a compost program when we don’t really have a working trash and recycling program,’” Clark said.

But he gave Clark a plan he used on a previous campus, explained how it worked and asked if they’d be willing to take it on. And Clark’s brain did a 180. Instead of accepting the idea that this is the way it’s always been, Clark latched onto the idea of this is how things could be, and Sustain Beloit was born.

So, they went to work. Clark collected various data from all the buildings on campus, got data from housekeepers, contacted other schools to see how they handled trash and recycling and worked with the waste disposal company. In addition, they applied for a $30,000 grant from the Green Loan Fund, a revolving sustainability fund that provides initial capital for campus projects.

“Syd worked with all of us to look at the buildings, figure out how we could improve upon what we had,’’ said facilities office manager and building coordinator LeeAnn Ryan. “Completely restructured it to put it back on the staff and students to remove their own trash from their buildings to an outside receptacle, and then, had to find the locations to put these receptacles.

“It’s been a tremendous improvement.”

For Clark, this project was about more than improving the trash and recycling program.

“For me, this was very much about environmental justice,” Clark said. “And specifically, about everyone should have the right to a safe working environment.

What this project really did was take a lot of this trash off the housekeepers’ plates. So, housekeepers had way more hours in their day to do their jobs, to be able to take care of our spaces.

“Especially because housekeeping is an eight-hour workout. And that’s just kind of compounded in those injuries and that long-term, weathering of the body is exacerbated by having to carry 30 pounds of trash down three flights of stairs every day.”

And one more thing: “There are some other problems that it solves,” Clark said, “like the trash cans that were in the dorms were a fire hazard. Before, they were blocking fire egress.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a college trash corner after a rowdy weekend — this previous program was putting everyone on campus in danger. No matter your employment or student status, if there’s a fire, we all got to get out.”

In December, the city of Beloit honored Clark for their work.

“Thank you for leading the way and helping us to be a more sustainable community,” Beloit City Council President Regina Dunkin said in a release. “Thank you to you and Beloit College for your leadership.” 

The honor from the city, the ability to help the housekeepers Clark once worked with side-by-side, the proof that one student can make a difference and leave a place better than they found it have all been added benefits to Clark for the trash and recycling overhaul.

“I’m really excited and proud of myself,” Clark said.

And proving, once again, that one person's trash is another person's treasure.

Story idea? You can reach Mike Woods at 920-246-6321 or at: michael.t.woods1@charter.com