John Berger has been working as a custodian at the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus for 14 years, and in that time, he’s gained a reputation for always going the extra mile when it comes to proper waste disposal— literally. In his own words, “I’ve been known to carry a banana peel all the way from the other side of the campus to put it into compost.”
Folks at the Environmental Interpretive Center (EIC), the main building John works in, have recounted this same incident to me unprompted with amusement. Until recently, they have been one of the only spots on campus to compost, and John doesn’t mind being a little inconvenienced because he knows that every action counts when helping the environment.
It’s the same reason he can be spotted jumping in to re-sort dumpster materials and frequently shares observations of what works and what doesn’t when implementing campus waste diversion programs. Occasionally, he vents about others not using the waste diversion tactics available to them.
As John says, “If we have an avenue to do it, why wouldn’t we?”
Advancing Sustainable Waste Management
John’s interest in reducing landfill waste has been years in the making. He worked at the Henry Ford Estate for 20 years, starting in 1986 before recycling was implemented. When he started working at the UM-Dearborn campus in 2011, recyclables like paper had to be sorted separately. Now that we have single stream recycling, it should be a breeze… but it’s not.
There are a lot of specific recycling rules. Materials cannot be contaminated by food or liquids, and plastic bags used to collect recyclable materials cannot be recycled with them. And that’s just scratching the surface of the intricacies involved in sorting waste properly. “There’s always quirks to it,” says John, “but in general, we’re slowly moving towards making a better process.”
In recent years, there has been an effort to standardize how students, faculty, and staff on campus dispose of their waste, including signage and the pairing of recycling and landfill bins in strategic locations across campus.
John has noted some improvements since the introduction of these new methods, but we still have a ways to go. Some people don’t read the signs, or get bogged down by the details. “There’s some hesitancy,” John summarizes. Unfortunately, complicated recycling rules mean that many recyclables get trashed due to a lack of know-how or access for many people who do want to practice environmental habits.
Convenience is hard to beat. Even someone as environmentally conscious as John relates to just wanting to get a morning coffee without worrying about the waste it will produce, but hey— a lot of to-go coffee cups are recyclable at UM-Dearborn now. That’s progress! Still, having an understanding of where waste goes and the impact it has on the environment is a great incentive to not buy in to single-use products. For example, plastic products that are not recycled never fully break down and often enter our food chain in the form of microplastics, while food waste produces great amounts of methane when rotting in landfills.
“Just think twice as to where it goes,” John urges. Sometimes, that one moment is enough to get people to reevaluate and make the choice to not buy and toss, but rather reduce, reuse, and recycle. Others aren’t so easily convinced that recycling works and don’t make the effort, thinking all waste goes to the landfill regardless. John shakes his head to this. “I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’ve seen the recycling center. They do recycle.”
While you can’t exactly get every skeptic to follow a recycling truck to its facility and show them the reality of waste sorting, everyone can learn the general rules of recycling and encourage “baby steps” for themselves and others to reduce waste. While doing this, you may find less expensive and more convenient ways to do things, such as having a reusable water bottle on hand.
In addition to managing his own waste disposal and improving the University’s, John is certainly no stranger to keeping others accountable on a personal level. Some of his coworkers tease that they can’t throw things out when John’s there, he reports with a smile. “I just say, ‘Oh nevermind, I’ll just change it when you’re gone.”
Community Service with a Smile
John cares for his community in a variety of ways in addition to custodial excellence. His family instilled a dedication to volunteer work in him from a young age. His grandmother was a chaplain with the American Legion, and his mother committed herself to the non-smoking movement. He recalls her bringing him into Detroit to pick up litter while municipal workers were on strike, to make the city presentable in time for the Republican National Convention in 1980. “I wasn’t recycling, back then,” he adds with a chuckle.
Today, his volunteering resume overwhelms. John regularly helps out friends and family with yard work, extracts invasive species like Garlic mustard with Friends of the Rouge and the Environmental Interpretive Center, and once logged around a thousand volunteer hours with the Henry Ford Estate in a single year. He sometimes volunteers with Planet Blue Ambassadors on his lunch break. “You feel good when you’re committed to something, and help to make it better.”
An essential aspect of John’s philosophy is understanding that we have a shared responsibility to make our communities a better place, and our actions, while small, do make a difference.
As someone who hosts a wealth of environmental knowledge and prompts those around him to engage in sustainability on multiple fronts, John is a key motivator. He likes to discuss new policies and share different waste disposal systems he comes across during his travels, and help everywhere he can. He does so with an infectious smile and positive attitude that inspires others to work towards a better future, even when things may seem hard.
John notes, “sometimes [progress] comes in increments, backslides, or happens all at once. And that makes it interesting.” It also makes progress something to always strive for.
Maybe we can’t all be John, but we can be inspired by him to make more of an effort to be our own waste goalies and better our community through acts as simple as being mindful of our purchases or walking the extra steps needed to reach a recycling bin. Thanking your custodians is a great idea, too.
If you want to practice proper waste disposal, a great place to start is reviewing campus recycling guidelines.
Natalie Albrecht is an intern with the Planet Blue Ambassador program at UM-Dearborn.