Leader of 1980s Student Advocacy for Recycling at Northwestern University Shares His Advice for Student Composting Advocates
Northwestern University diverted over 2,700 tons of waste from landfills in 2017 per its most recently publicized Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, which also acknowledged the student activism that initiated this shift:
“Northwestern’s diversion program started as a student-led initiative in 1989 and is now part of daily operations across the Evanston and Chicago campuses.”
The successful student activism for recycling on campus continues to fascinate and inspire current students. I sat down with Matt Myers Boulton, one of its leaders, to hear more firsthand.
How Student Advocacy Fundamentally Changed NU Waste Management
The success of Boulton’s cohort was the culmination of over a decade of student advocacy for recycling amid University concerns about the financial cost and space for bins. In 1989, Northwestern Students for a Better Environment (NSBE) was absorbed into Students for Ecological and Environmental Development (SEED), and Boulton became their recycling chair.
Learn more about Northwestern Students for a Better Environment’s advocacy and contribution to recycling on campus here.
Boulton said that SEED reached out to the administration to collaborate while exerting “positive pressure” through community-based activism.
“We felt encouraged by the student interest and student passion around it,” he said.
He added that the biggest challenge was figuring out the right way to collaborate with the university’s administration, beginning with an effort to understand their concerns.
“I remember developing a set of arguments for it from multiple perspectives,” Boulton said.
SEED argued to the University that recycling made sense environmentally as well as economically. Finally, in 1989, the administration responded positively to student inquiries, and they began exploring collaboration opportunities.
“That felt good,” Boulton said. “We found a pretty receptive partner in the administration.”
Initially, student volunteers helped staff the limited recycling program. Boulton drove a van around campus, picking up trash bags of cans and bottles.
“I just remember the cans and slinging them from my shoulder,” Boulton said.
The Northwestern Volunteer Network also helped mobilize students in the effort to implement recycling at Northwestern. The organization coordinated student volunteers across campus to minimize scheduling conflicts, maximize impact and promote collaborations.
Northwestern was part of a larger trend of universities transitioning to recycling in the 1990s. According to the Illinois EPA, in the early ‘80s, more than 90 percent of municipal waste was landfilled. In 1990, the Illinois Solid Waste Management Act was passed, requiring all public universities in Illinois to develop recycling plans by 1995. Even though they were not included in the law, private universities such as Illinois Wesleyan University also began recycling thanks to pressure from student advocates.
To Boulton, the passion and community around activism on campus was “the spirit of the age.”
“There was a lot of dynamism on campus around environmental issues,” he explained. “Something was in the air at that time in the late ‘80s.”
Looking to the Future
Recycling at Northwestern has come a long way since they relied on students like Boulton to ferry around bags of cans.
Now, as stated in its 2018 Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, “Northwestern endeavors to adopt practices that reflect a comprehensive approach to conserving resources and reducing and managing waste. Waste prevention, reuse, recycling, and composting are prioritized over landfill disposal.”
Boulton is pleased with the University’s progress; today, Northwestern diverts nearly 3,000 tons of its waste from landfills every year.
“It makes me think of all the people that we worked with, the students who had a vision,” he said. “It's excellent that that has become second nature to the school.”
Boulton, now an award-winning producer and director, is excited by the work of current environmental student activist groups at Northwestern and their influence on the University’s composting policy.
“I think students are often in a position to sense things as they emerge in the culture, as they become pressing and important,” Boulton said. “It makes me feel thankful for all of the students in 1989. It also makes you feel thankful for students in 2025 who just want to keep things moving forward. There's a lot more work to do and I’m inspired by you guys.”
Lindsey Byman, president of Cats Who Compost (CWC), the student advocacy group working to establish university-wide composting, said she is inspired by NSBE’s advocacy.
“They got it done, and it made lasting change,” Byman said. “Now we're doing that and actually making a difference.”
Byman hopes that Cats Who Compost and their collaborators achieve their mission of fundamentally shifting the University’s standard waste diversion practices just as Boulton and his peers did almost 40 years ago. Once that happens, she will be happy to see the club retire.
“Our end goal is that Northwestern compost is front-of-house everywhere, so wherever you see a recycling bin and a trash bin there's also a compost bin,” Byman said.
Inspired by their efforts, Boulton has a message for CWC and other environmental advocates at NU:
“Trust your vision for what the future could be. Reach out to the powers that be, the administration. Make sure you're having some fun with it…It can be exhausting to keep pushing and keep trying. There's a lot of progress that we need to continue to make, we just have to keep moving forward. It's never just pure victory; it's always keep moving forward and keep learning about it. If it does happen overnight then it wasn't an ambitious enough vision; by its nature, the vision needs to be a stretch.”