USC’s waste diversion rate has progressed to 60.1% for the 2026 fiscal year, according to Sustainability at USC, a 2.5% increase from the 2025 fiscal year. The university hopes to meet its goal of 90% waste diversion by 2028, nearly 30 percentage points from the current rate.
Sustainability on campus is a “completely ambitious goal”, says Gina Whisenant, USC’s Waste and Recycling Manager.
“We need people to understand that we all play a role,” Whisenant said. “It’s not something that one department can do on its own. We need everyone that touches waste, generates waste, throws away waste, to make the correct choice.”
Waste diversion is the percentage of total waste material diverted from landfills through recycling, composting, reusing and repurposing rather than being thrown in the trash, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Around campus, current initiatives include installing multistream waste bins and detailed composting flyers. The goal is to encourage students to reduce, reuse, recycle and compost, according to Whisenant.
USC’s multistream waste stations separate materials into compost, recycling and landfill. Recyclable materials are sent to a Materials Recovery Facility where items are separated and sorted into their respective categories. Compost is collected and brought to an industrial compost facility where it is processed into organic material and used as feedstock, soil and mulch, according to USC Facilities and Planning Management (FPM).
FPM instructs students to divide waste, check for compostable labels and separate food from its container before throwing it away. Whether students follow these guidelines is a question the university faces as it works toward its 90% waste diversion goal.
Alongside campus initiatives to install multistream bins and post compost flyers, students and faculty can do their part to reduce waste on campus.
For interim chief sustainability officer Ellen Dux, sustainability on campus comes in various forms. For example, Dux highlights the surplus store reopening and the significance it has for students and faculty alike.
USC Surplus Sales sells gently used furniture, appliances and technology at discounted prices.
The surplus store is meant to give “everything that we possibly can a second life,” says Dux.
The store reopened last year after closing during COVID-19.
Dux believes that social media and pop-up sales can spread the word about the storefront and encourage people to give back and buy from the store.
“The more we can just help all of our colleagues who own these things get the word about them, the better it is for everybody,” said Dux.
Some student organizations, like the SC Garden Club, have incorporated these sustainability practices into their own activities.
The club maintains a garden behind Parkside Arts & Humanities and operates “various compost systems,” said Elizabeth Fong, the president of the club.
“We definitely make sure that we’re trying to be conscious about what we’re getting and what we’re bringing to the garden,” Fong said. “I think making sure that when we’re looking at maybe investing in supplies or replacing things, and how we can repurpose our old materials versus it just going to a landfill.”
Encouraging ways to reuse, reduce and recycle is a large part of taking care of their garden, Fong said.
“When we buy plants from a nursery, they come in a plastic pot, and so we often will hang on to those with the intent of reusing them to either start new seeds in our greenhouse or to repurpose them,” she said.
Edited by Jadon Frank and Ally Nakamura