The average college student produces as much as 640 pounds of solid waste each year, from food scraps to toiletries to old research papers. But while many students furnish their dorms with their own trash cans, not all waste ends up in the right place. Communal bathroom trash bins often become receptacles for takeout, bulky Amazon boxes, and more. Many students have faced the minorly annoying decision: If I have to throw out last night’s pizza box, should I walk all the way down to the dumpsters or just take a trip to the restroom down the hall? While students can technically choose either option, it’s no secret that bathrooms throughout the campus display conspicuous notices urging users against throwing such “personal trash” away in communal areas.
Harvard students can have quite impressive vocabularies, but can they define what “personal trash” is? Unfortunately, there is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the term, which can make it difficult to maintain a clean shared living space. It is necessary to raise awareness about the concept, as well as the reason for its existence, to promote campus public health.
What is “personal trash,” you ask? Many students aren’t aware of an official definition — likely because there isn’t one. The term is not defined in the Harvard Student Handbook, and, truth be told, the author of this article had a difficult time obtaining an interview with an administrator willing to provide a relevant official statement. One Harvard communications team member offered in an anonymous capacity that “personal trash in this context would include items such as food and food packaging and shipping boxes which take up a lot of space and can also create pest control issues.”
So how does the mystery “personal trash” process work? Apparently it depends on the situation, which hardly lends more clarity to the question. If “personal trash” is found in communal bathroom trash cans, custodial staff are instructed to make a report to Harvard Yard Operations, who are responsible for addressing dormitory issues in Harvard Yard. This authority then sends an email to the students in the responsible entryway, asking them to take out their own trash. An example this email reads as follows:
Dear ______ Hall Residents,
Hope your Fall Term is going along smoothly. We need your help keeping your bathrooms clean by making sure you take all personal trash, recycling and compost directly to the trash room. Custodians are not allowed to empty the trash bins until all personal trash is removed.
Thank you for removing the personal trash from the bins in the bathroom ASAP and for helping to avoid this in the future.
Yard Operations
All in all, it is a fair and direct email. However, these notices are easily ignored in the endless sea of electronic information that floods students’ inboxes daily.
You may wonder: Wouldn’t it just be easier to ask the custodial staff to take care of it and bring down our trash themselves? Isn’t that included in our housing bill? The answer is no, and the reason for that is respectful consideration. As functioning — albeit young — adults, we should be responsible for cleaning up after ourselves. Harvard outlines procedures regarding personal trash to ease the workload of our hardworking custodians, who spend every other moment cleaning the rest of our shared living spaces. Given the magnitude and scale of their responsibilities, not to mention the countless stairs custodians are required to climb, is it not more appropriate to ask undergraduates to occasionally take ownership of their own takeout?
Custodian Jose Pontillo is a hardworking and kind individual who works in Matthews Hall. Each weekday, he ensures that the communal bathrooms under his care are meticulously cleaned, and that the toiletries are replenished in accordance with his duties. But according to university policy, he is not supposed to take out personal trash. However, custodians like Pontillo are oftentimes more generous with their efforts than they need to be. As a resident of Matthews, I have noticed him dispose of trash cans full of personal trash that aren’t his responsibility.
But are Harvard students so busy that they are unable to address their own waste? Speaking to fellow first years, it is clear that we aren’t. For all of the work we do, we still find time — even begrudgingly — to do laundry, brush our teeth, clean our sheets, etc. Leaving trash out is a conscious choice driven by convenience and the belief that someone else will take care of it eventually. One Harvard student, Sydney Gottesman ‘27, notes that “part of being respectful in a shared space is thinking about how your actions impact others.”
Gottesman is right. Improper trash disposal makes a place less livable and less inviting. With many of us so far from home, it’s not surprising that all of us want a safe, clean space to come home to after a long day of class.
Unfortunately, when the trash does pile up, several issues materialize. One involves pests. As trash festers in the bathroom, it begins to smell and attract mice and mosquitos. Infestations are not novel problems for Harvard residents; a fruit fly infestation in Adams House several years ago prompted serious action from Yard Ops and Harvard University Dining Service and increased awareness among students regarding the dangers of improper food waste disposal. In dorms across the campus, exposed waste can bring about nuisances that can take weeks to eliminate.
Another concern associated with personal trash is odor. When food begins to rot in a bathroom, where high moisture and heat are regular conditions, unpleasant smells begin to proliferate. The trash can turns into an object to avoid, thus becoming even less likely to make it down to the dumpster and more at risk of marinating for days on end. The visual impact of an overflowing waste bin is detrimental to a dorm floor’s atmosphere. Despite there being a centralized location for trash, the space still begins to feel dirty. In a shared living arrangement, these developments can make the bathroom feel unwelcome or undesirable to use, cheapening the residential experience.
Overall, the idea of “Personal Trash” can be both ambiguous and frustrating to Harvard students and staff, but it is also a classification that benefits both groups. A clean, working, and synergetic community requires maintenance efforts on both sides. While there are ongoing projects aimed at improving the situation, Harvard students should practice basic respect toward both our neighbors and those who work to make our dorms livable. Simple, considerate actions, like a short walk to the dumpster, improve the lives and communities of Harvard students with minimal cost. We all live together, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.
