When faculty and staff arrive at work next week, they'll be greeted by a spiffy new piece of office equipment stationed on their desks: a six-inch high plastic trash can called a "mini-bin."

The mini-bin signals a new way of doing business at UVM that, managers say, will save money and reduce trash.

Under new procedures, custodial staff will no longer empty wastebaskets in individual offices — a task which they do daily now. Instead faculty and staff will store trash in their mini-bins and dispose of it themselves in a receptacle centrally located near their offices. Employees will also be responsible for carrying their recyclable material such as paper, bottles and cans to a central bin. Units will decide where to place the centralized trash and recycle bins, which will be emptied daily, in partnership with the Custodial Services department.

In the fall, all wastebaskets that aren't needed will be collected.

The new self-reliance, admirable as it is, isn't optional, says Lesley Kornegay, director of Custodial Services.

To help address UVM's deficit, Kornegay's unit had to reduce its budget by 8.2 percent for fiscal year 2010, or more than $400,000. Given the unit's cost structure, most of the savings had to come via cuts in her personnel budget. But through a combination of not filling vacant custodial positions and bringing cleaning services that were outsourced back in-house, which created new jobs, Kornegay was able to avoid laying off any staff.

"We're in a situation across the board where we need to take advantage of any efficiencies that are out there," says Richard Cate, vice president for Finance and Enterprise Services, which oversees Custodial Services. "It doesn't make sense for the thousands of us that work on campus to create this additional cost when, in fact, at home we all take care of it ourselves."

Zoning challenge

In looking for strategic ways to deploy a smaller custodial workforce, the university analyzed impacts across a range of cleaning zones. Research studies showed a correlation between levels of cleanliness and both student learning and student health, so classrooms, recreation and health facilities, library space, computer rooms, and food areas were all off limits for service reductions. Reducing service to faculty and staff offices, on the other hand, would result in few, if any, adverse impacts.

UVM is not alone in adopting a strategy of establishing and prioritizing cleaning zones, according to Tony Maione, president of CORE Management Services in Endicott, N.Y., a consulting firm specializing in custodial and environmental services.

"Colleges and universities across the country are making intelligent decisions on ways to change their task frequency to require fewer resources," he said. "They're doing it by segmenting campuses into area type and applying reductions only to the less critical ones."

The University of Connecticut, Catholic University, and UCLA are among the many schools adopting strategies similar to UVM's, Maione says.

Less is more

Although faculty and staff will have more to do, the net effect of the new system will be a cleaner work environment, according to Kornegay. Custodial staff will clean offices and non-public conference rooms once a week, but will spend more time on the job. Services for those spaces will include vacuuming, sweeping and mopping, dusting, stain removal, and disinfecting touch zones like door knobs and telephones. Computers will not be touched.

Laboratories, public conference rooms, and other public areas will continue to receive daily custodial service, including trash removal. Corridors and hallways will be cleaned daily.

Erica Spiegel, who oversees UVM's recycling program, is optimistic that the new system will actually reduce the amount of trash faculty and staff create.

"Individuals will become more aware of the trash they're generating at their desk," she says. "We have this joke that every night the garbage fairy comes in and removes the trash from your office, so you never really have to deal with it. With this new system, people will see five coffee cups stacked up and think, 'Maybe I should carry my own cup.' It makes people a little bit more aware and accountable."

Every level of the university will be affected by the new policy, Cate said, with no strata immune from it.

"No such strata exist," he said. "We're all in this together. I don't think there are a lot of people at the university who go home and have a service take out the trash for them. I put my garbage out on the corner every Sunday night, and I expect most people here do the same. I think we can handle this work."

The mini-bins will be accompanied by a tent card that will describe the new service in detail and indicate what day of the week individual offices will be cleaned.