NIU STEM Café encourages audience to rethink recycling

If you put a used plastic bottle, food carton or cereal box in your recycling bin, what happens to it? You might be surprised to hear that many of the recyclable products we use actually end up in incinerators or landfills, instead of being recycled.

At the next Northern Illinois University STEM Café on Wednesday, April 14, Courtney Gallaher, associate professor in the NIU Department of Geographic and Atmospheric Sciences and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and Meghann Maves, Total Recycling program manager at Waste Management Recycling Services, will lead a lively discussion of the ways in which we consume products, types of materials they are made from, and the environmental and social justice implications of our recycling industry.

The STEM Café will take place online at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Learn more and register at go.niu.edu/trashtalk.

Northern Illinois University STEM Cafés are sponsored by NIU STEAM and are designed to increase public awareness of the critical role STEM fields play in our everyday lives. For more information, contact Judith Dymond, Ed.D., at 815-753-4751 or email jdymond@niu.edu.