“A campus-wide effort.” We hear this clich&233;d phrase often, but the issue of campus recycling perfectly illustrates the need for this seemingly utopian ideal.

After what it said took years of planning and fundraising efforts, the U’s administration announced that its recycling program — which involved distributing recycling bins to every building on campus — would begin on June 1.

That day has come and gone, and the results are a flawed system that has students and faculty alike wondering just where, exactly, they’re supposed to be recycling.

The blame does not lie with the administration or Plant Operations — who are in charge of implementing the program in most campus buildings — all buildings did receive recycling bins on June 1. The problem is that many have yet to distribute them.

If the organizers spent years coordinating this epic mobilization, shouldn’t buildings have known what to do immediately when the bins arrived?

In any case, it has been six weeks since the confusion began. Those in charge of the program ought to have taken proactive measures to preclude such difficulties, and the U’s building managers should have, by now, carried out the remedial task of passing out bins to each room.

Although we agree that buildings have had ample time to distribute bins, the U has had even more time to execute a simple campus-recycling program.

It seems like a desire for early publicity led the administration to misinform the campus and cause the recycling program to start on the wrong foot. Why else would they have launched before the program was ready?

There are not a lot of factors in this equation. It takes proper organization and distribution of recycling bins throughout every building, and diligence on the part of everyone to recycle.

Usually the last one is the hard part — we haven’t even gotten to step two.

But, although our recycling program has hit a glitch, it’s still due the benefit of the doubt that those bins will be in every classroom of every building on campus, eventually.

If the buildings don’t get their act together soon, though — or if they’re simply misinformed — the U should follow through proactively. They went through all the trouble of getting this program together — don’t they want to hasten along an easy success story?

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