Recycling at MUSC: Motivation through dollars and cents

By Leanna Joyner

Call her opportunistic, but Christine von Kolnitz, recycling coordinator for the Medical University of South Carolina, knows that money makes the world go ’round—and that it can help keep it green, too. Von Kolnitz uses financial incentives to push her recycling mantra: “reduce, reuse, recycle” because, after more than nine years of helping MUSC reduce their amount of waste, she has discovered that dollars and cents are the real motivators to achieving a cleaner environment.

Take the simple act of recycling aluminum cans, glass, plastic, cardboard and office paper. This alone annually saves the university $80,000 in Charleston County solid waste user-fees for incineration. She makes money off the program to boot, by bringing in $10,000 in payment to the university for some of their recyclable goods. In the instance of aluminum can recycling, the money is donated to the Aluminum Cans for Burned Children program.

But von Kolnitz’s work doesn’t stop with run-of-the-mill recycling projects. She has helped the university recycle unused food scraps from the kitchen in vermi-composting bins to ultimately make fertilizer for university grounds and gardens. She encouraged the purchase of a chipper/shredder to mulch limbs and leaves for green spaces, rather than paying to have the debris hauled off and burned. She has worked with Dr. Michael Schmidt, a professor who represents MUSC with the Sustainable Universities Initiative program, to acquire three waterless urinals in the school’s Basic Science building. She has even identified that 236.91 tons of steel and 450.71 tons of concrete were recycled from a recent demolition project.

In each of these cases von Kolnitz was “waiting for the crack in the door” before she “pushed it open” to make things happen. She says she’s constantly on the lookout for her next project and when she nudges and the door doesn’t budge, she works on another program for a while until the opportunity is right.

For example, a new employee in the Rutledge Tower boiler room realized that by making an upfront investment in a new feedwater control, the university could save over 4,400 gallons of water per day. The change was made and utility usage decreased, saving the university $10,000 annually in water and $11,400 each year in gas. With the potential cost savings in mind, von Kolnitz was then given the responsibility of working with engineering and facilities employees to manage the university’s utilities, which includes identifying where and how to most effectively reduce utility consumption and expenses.

Reducing consumption doesn’t always reduce your bill, she says. “Last year for example, electric usage went down but the price went up, so MUSC still paid more, even when using less. But just imagine the costs if usage had not been reduced.”

Now she’s taking her message about reduced utility consumption on the road within the university. She’s talking to set managers, engineering staff, shop foremen at the plant and she’s publishing pieces in the MUSC newspaper, The Catalyst, to remind everyone on campus how much it costs to run these facilities. She lets them know that small actions like turning out lights when leaving a room or calling a plumber to fix a leaky faucet means a lot when it all adds up, especially when dealing with 11,673 employees.

Just as turning out lights in classrooms, offices and closets makes a large cumulative impact on cost savings, the sundry projects that von Kolnitz is involved with make an impact on the preservation of natural resources.

“It’s all about natural resources, but I don’t say that but once,” says von Kolnitz about her promotion of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” message. Instead she focuses on the bottom line—a concept that produces results.

Leanna Joyner works with the Harmony Project to collaborate with communities on improving the quality of life on three levels: economic, social and environmental—changes that ultimately impact the long-term success in a sustainable future. Find out more at www.harmonyprojectsc.org.

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