Campus community members who’ve attended large events at UC Merced or sat through New Employee Orientation in recent years have likely met Matthew Hirota.
Hirota works for Facilities Management as the campus’s waste reduction/recycle coordinator. One of his primary responsibilities is to help UC Merced produce zero waste by 2020, which is part of the campus’s Triple Zero commitment. He does so by educating faculty and staff members, students and visitors about how to properly dispose of their waste.
Hirota, who joined the university in 2011, gives his spiel once a month to the campus’s newcomers during New Employee Orientation, which also gives him an opportunity to educate them about UC Merced’s Triple Zero goal. A year after he started at UC Merced, Hirota collaborated with Eric Scott of the UC Merced Library to create the circular refuse containers used in the Lantern.
