Background
Emerson College in Boston has made sustainability a key part of campus life, with goals to reduce waste, increase diversion (recycling + composting), and educate the campus community. As part of this effort, the college has implemented a range of initiatives, including updating their waste signage, to improve how students, faculty, and staff sort their waste correctly.
The Challenge
Like many campuses, Emerson struggled with low recycling and composting rates and high contamination in waste streams. Much of the problem stemmed from confusion about what items belonged in which bins, especially in busy areas like dining facilities and common spaces.
To address this, the Sustainability Team focused on improving waste infrastructure and education, with one clear strategy: better signage. It wasn’t enough to put bins out—students had to understand them.
Recycle Away worked directly with the director of sustainability to get the right bins in place and she created the right signage. We learned so much from the work done at Emerson. We were inspired to create our new offering of signage solutions based on the amazing work done by the team at Emerson.
Learn more about our signage solutions
Signage Focused on User Experience
In early 2024, the sustainability office conducted waste signage focus groups with students, faculty, and staff. Participants provided feedback on existing signs, such as clarity, usefulness, and visibility, which helped the team understand common pain points.
This input directly informed a new signage rollout later that year. According to the Sustainable Emerson blog, the updated signs were designed with user feedback in mind and aligned with best practices in communication and visual clarity.
During the redesign, the team aimed to make signs that:
- Clearly showed what goes in each bin
- Distinguished recycling, compost, and trash with specific examples
- Increased visibility at point of disposal
- Helped reduce guesswork and improper sorting
These improvements echoed a broader sustainability plan at Emerson that explicitly calls for improving waste infrastructure, including bin location and signage design to support accessibility and better sorting behavior.
Results & Wider Impact
Emerson participated in the annual Campus Race to Zero Waste (formerly hosted by RecycleMania), an eight-week competition to boost waste diversion across higher education institutions. Throughout this period, the college saw improvements in its waste diversion rate—a sign that better engagement and infrastructure (including signage) were making a difference.
Although diversion rates on campus were historically low, the waste signage project paired with outreach activities like sorting competitions, pledges, and educational events contributed to measurable progress and greater sustainability awareness in the community.
What This Shows About Effective Signage
Emerson’s experience highlights several key lessons:
- Signage must be clear and contextual. Generic labels aren’t enough. People need specific examples of what goes where.
- User feedback strengthens design. Focus groups helped ensure that signage addressed real confusion and needs.
- Signage paired with engagement is powerful. Competitions, pledges, and events make signs part of a larger culture of sustainability.
- Infrastructure improvements are strategic sustainability actions. Emerson’s Sustainability Action Plan explicitly includes signage as part of its waste reduction strategy.
Conclusion
At Emerson College, waste signage was more than decoration—it was a strategic tool to help a complex community understand and improve their waste sorting habits. By listening to users, placing clear and helpful signs, and embedding them in broader sustainability programming, Emerson took a meaningful step toward its zero-waste goals and showed how communication design can support environmental action.
Spotlight: Weigh the Waste — Tracking Waste to Drive Change
A key component of Emerson’s sustainability efforts is its Weigh the Waste program, a hands-on initiative designed to raise awareness about food waste while collecting real data on how much waste the campus community produces. During regular events in the dining hall, sustainability staff and volunteers help diners sort their leftover food, liquids, recyclables, and trash into clearly labeled categories, then weigh those streams to monitor trends over time.
This process not only engages students in sorting correctly at the “moment of decision,” but also provides measurable insights into reductions in waste per capita throughout the academic year. For example, data collected over one year showed significant decreases in edible compost and other waste categories as the program progressed, demonstrating that awareness and participation can directly reduce waste generation and inform future sustainability strategies.
Case Studies
