Habitat for Humanity of Snohomish County picked up three student-designed and constructed recycling stations from Cascadia College this week to deliver to its Lynnwood store.

The triple stations — which sort compost, recycling and landfill — were designed and built by students in a Cascadia engineering course, using re-purposed materials. They worked in partnership with students in Cascadia’s sustainability program who created signage to indicate what products should go in which bins.

“The whole reason I enrolled in Sustainable Practices is because I wanted to help the community and this does exactly that,” says John Calvin, a senior in Cascadia’s four-year degree program.

Habitat for Humanity Director of Retail Operations Roger Johnson says donations like this go a long way toward supporting people in our community. “Everyone wins. We take stuff that would usually go to landfills and sell it, and then use the money to build homes for low-income families.”

The donation comes just in time for Earth Week, when Cascadia and UW Bothell will undertake their annual garbage sort. Staff and students will collect waste from campus garbage cans, spread it out, and see how much could be diverted from the landfill if properly separated.

“Until I visited a landfill as part of this program, I didn’t realize how long it takes food scraps to decompose in that type of environment,” explains Cascadia senior, Zach Pohle. “Food waste needs air to decompose, and landfills are too tightly compacted for that process to be an efficient one.”

The garbage sort is part of the campus Earth Week celebration which includes speakers, films, tree plantings, and eco-art. All events are free and open to the public.