Meet Tyler Kuss

Tyler Kuss ’25 has been highly involved in protecting the planet well before coming to Valpo, having helped found an environmental club at his high school. His passion for a green future was one of the main things that drew him to pursue integrated business and engineering at the University. 

“I wanted to do something with the environment besides just environmental science,” Tyler says. “All the other schools only had environmental science programs, and I thought environmental engineering was a better fit.”

On top of a minor in environmental engineering, Tyler is a passionate member of the environmentalist group Earthtones. He also works for both the University and the Porter County Recycling and Waste Reduction District as a plastic waste recycling intern, helping both Valpo and other local organizations create a more sustainable future. 

The first step in reducing the amount of plastic finding its way to the trash was to get a better idea of the current situation. For Tyler and fellow intern Rachel Painter, that meant starting out with a campus trash audit. 

“We walked through every building and counted the number of trash cans,” Tyler says. “We sorted samples from academic buildings, res life halls, and administration, sorted the trash into categories.”

On top of finding that over 40 percent of all garbage on campus was plastic, the two also found that the majority of that plastic was in the form of the trash bags themselves. That led to a simple change that ended up saving the school thousands of dollars: reducing the number of garbage cans on campus.

“Twenty-cents a bag doesn’t seem like much, but when you have almost 700 cans on campus being emptied every day, it adds up,” Tyler says. “We’d see bags with a single piece of paper in them, but they were taken every day, no matter what.” 

Tyler and Rachel were able to put together a list of over 50 additional action steps that Valpo can take to save money and become a more sustainable campus. 

Now, Tyler is reaching out to local schools and restaurants to examine their waste practices and find ways that more organizations around Porter County can help improve the environment. Among the projects he, Rachel, and the Porter County Recycling and Waste Reduction District are working on is a “Green Certified” sticker that local restaurants will be able to qualify for by taking steps towards reducing plastic waste. 

“I think consumers are looking for that more and more, and businesses want to look good for their consumers,” Tyler says.

For more on what Tyler does, and the other sustainability interns at Valpo, click here.