Turning Waste Into a Resource — A SWANA Scholarship Application Essay

By: Andrew Talkish, Student at Clemson University

The essay below was submitted by Andrew Talkish, a student who applied for the Grant H. Flint Scholarship. He is attending Clemson University pursuing a degree in Environmental and Natural Resources Management with a minor in sustainability.

Solid waste has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. It all started when I was a 3-year-old fascinated by the City of Columbia Solid Waste crews. I was obsessed with the garbage truck and everything about it. Many thought it was a phase that I would grow out of, but this was not the case.

I continued the friendships I made with the city solid waste employees all throughout my childhood, and as I did, I became more passionate about recycling. This passion even landed me some national attention on The Ellen Degeneres Show when I was just six years old. In school, when it came time to choose career possibilities, it was a no brainer for me as I have always wanted to work in solid waste. I am very aware that this is not usually a field that children strive to work in, but for me, it has always been a goal of mine to help provide communities with this essential service. This is something I not only want to be a part of, but also want to improve.

I have spent the last semester interning with the Greenville County, SC Solid Waste Division where I have learned more about this field than I could have ever imagined. I learned very quickly that Greenville County truly is a leader in the region when it comes to innovation in waste management. The services we provide to residents is unmatched by any neighboring county, and we do it in a very responsible way. The county operates six full service drop off centers that take residential waste, recycling, E-Waste, and even hazardous household waste. In addition to this, we operate eight drop off recycling stations that are accessible 24/7, and we even have the state’s first food waste composting drop off site. The county also operates both a C&D and MSW landfill which is home to great programs such as leachate evaporators and landfill gas-to-energy programs. I am truly learning how to treat waste as a resource here, and I cannot wait to apply this knowledge when I graduate and enter the workforce.

One way to turn waste into a resource that I am particularly passionate about is composting. Nearly 30% of the waste that we put in landfills in the United States is material that could have been composted. I see this as a truly wasted resource. If we were able to capture this resource, not only would it save space in landfills, it would also provide a great soil amendment to the agriculture industry that could decrease the reliance on synthetic fertilizer.

My dream one day is to start a curbside composting program in a city that does not currently have access to this type of service. I feel that my education at Clemson University as well as my internship have equipped me greatly to be a leader in this process. I aspire to start a movement in the industry much like the one we saw with curbside recycling in the early 2000s.

We as humans will never stop producing waste, but there are many things we can do to turn waste into a resource, and I am excited to be a part of an industry that embraces this idea so well.

As a way of recognizing some of the outstanding scholarship applications nominated to SWANA by our chapters across the United States and Canada, we are posting applicants’ one-page essays on our blog. The essay, which was 10 percent of their application score, was to speak to the role solid waste management plays in addressing an environmental issue currently in the news. We asked, “What are the responsibilities of individuals who generate the waste versus the professionals tasked with managing the waste?”