Recycling on campus has increased significantly from last year and this year, the Residence Halls could lead the way.
In about a month, students living in the Residence Halls will have access to paper, cardboard, plastic and aluminum recycling, said Joshua James, the U recycling coordinator. Currently the entire campus only has paper and cardboard recycling.
“We’re going to try it at the Residence Halls first. Then we’ll try to get it campus wide,” James said. The students may not have cardboard recycling in their dorms, but the idea of having mixed recycle bins for plastics, paper and aluminum is on the table.
Paper recycling is available anywhere on campus and throughout campus housing. Individual residence buildings, however, are responsible for plastics and aluminum recycling. “(Plastics and aluminum recycling) are more voluntary. A lot of them have their own agreements for their buildings,” James said.
The Residence Halls have access to a dumpster-size recycling bin for plastics, paper and aluminum behind the Medical Towers.
“Some do make the extra effort on their own to (carry their mixed recycling to the large bin) right now,” James said, as many of the houses in Officer’s Circle do. “We’re just trying to make that a little easier for them.”
The Residence Halls have a history of contaminating their recycling bins with non-recyclable material. As a result, Justin Reuter, a graduate student in education leadership and policy and the assistant Residential Education coordinator for the Sage Point residences, said, “We’re going to have to sort through the trash.”
Reuter advises the Green Team, a Residence Hall student group that focuses on sustainability measures in the dorms. A big part of its recycling initiative this year is stopping contamination. Green Team students volunteer to sort through the recycling bins to pick out contaminant items, such as cereal boxes in the mixed paper bins. They watch for dorm floors with chronically contaminated bins and coordinate with the residence advisers to help educate the floor’s students about avoiding contamination.
The contamination problem has not been as big as it was last year, James said. Recycling bins for entire floors last year were located on each floor near the elevators.
“A lot of people were just using them as trash cans. (Custodians) were having to throw a lot of stuff away and sort this and that,” he said. The bins are no longer in high traffic areas this year; instead they are in main entrances and student lounges.
The current location of the bins has made recycling less obvious for new students, said Steve Thueson, an undeclared freshman living in Chapel Glen. “I knew there was some (recycling). But I hadn’t really seen anything on my floor,” he said. After having a conversation with a friend about the recycling program, he found the bins in the student lounges. “I just never go in there (the lounges). I just don’t really leave my room ever (except to go to classes),” Thueson said. “Now that I know where the recycling bins are, I will use them.”
Across campus the weight of recycled material has grown. A little more than 50,000 pounds of paper was recycled in August 2007 at the U, said the Office of Sustainability. This August, the U recycled 94,540 pounds total of paper8212;an increase of more than 44,000 pounds of recycled paper.
Contamination in the Residence Halls has decreased this year, which means that the overall recyclable weight has gone up. The students in residential living have an impact on those trends. “It looks like we have students with more green minds,” he said. “(The U) would like to continue to see the numbers go up in (Residence Halls), but it will take time to tell.”