OSU-Cascades Library

The Valley Library offers collection bins for paper recycling, bottle/can recycling, and trash disposal on all six floors of the library. Look for large, silver triple-sort bins (paper, bottle/can, trash) or individual bins for bottles/cans and waste.  The Valley Library depends on you and other community members to correctly sort waste to ensured continued recycling success in the library and on campus.

Currently we offer composting for staff use in various staff kitchenettes in the building.  We are piloting PUBLIC composting in Spring Term 2024.  The two compost pails will be on the second floor of the Valley Library, across the vending machines, by the Eco-to-go drop offs, on the stairs down to Java 2.  Thanks to our OSU student group the Waste Watchers Sustainability Club, who will be managing this pilot for us!    Read more about OSU composting how-to here.

 

Did you know?  Pizza boxes are compostable!   Bring them to the Borrowing and Information Desk anytime, but note we usually offer a cart to drop them off during dead and finals weeks,  where discarded pizza boxes can be placed. During other times of the term, pizza boxes can also be placed into the compost bins on the loading dock outside the library.

 

Water bottle filling stations are available at drinking fountains on all six floors of the Valley Library. This supports the use of refillable bottles and helps to reduce the use of single-use bottled water containers.

Rather than using compressed air canisters to clean library computer keyboards (and sending empty canisters to the landfill), library staff uses a small compressed air generator to accomplish the same task, with no waste, for over 150 desktop and laptop.

Recycled paper that does not contain personal information is cut and reused as scratch paper for staff and patron use at service desk and in the Learning Commons.

 

 The Valley Library Learning Commons is a space heavily used by students, which means that messes need to be cleaned up on a regular basis. Washable rags are used for many cleaning chores, nearly eliminating the need to dispose of cleaning cloths in the landfill-bound trash. Bottles of cleaning solution are refilled from bulk containers, reducing the number of empty plastic bottles going into recycling.

 

On a daily basis, The Valley Library receives materials in shipping boxes. Wherever possible, those boxes are reused to ship materials to other libraries who want to borrow our materials on a short-term basis (part of our Interlibrary Loan services).

Library materials, shared among many users on campus and out in the community and larger world (really!), occassionally suffer damage. Rather than recycling these items or sending them to the landfill, in most cases, library staff repair the damaged items and return them to the collection for continued use by patrons.

 

  

TheValley Library Party Pack is a 30 place setting made from recycled plastic, and enables library staff to reduce or eliminate event waste, particularly single-use plastic place settings. This party pack can be reserved (through an internal calendar)  for department meet ups, social events, student pot lucks, focus groups and more!  We use our dishwasher in the library to clean and store the materials in a large plastic tote.  This was  inspired by Corvallis's own Green Girl who provides large quantities (100s) of reusable place settings locally!   Note -  The Guin Libray in Newport also has a party pack.  

The whiteboard markers we lend are refillable, so we aren't going through a bunch of single-use pens! Instead of plastic-sided erasers, we include a cloth sqaure to erase that can be washed and reused.