Students, Faculty Examine Recycling on Campus

Recycling on campus, which moved from a “sorted” to a “single stream” system two years ago, still causes confusion among the Exeter community. Instead of sorting paper and plastic, the new system accepts all recyclable materials in any collection receptacle and transports them from campus to a compactor, where they are then taken to a recycling facility for sorting. But inconsistent bin labels and colors are making the recycling system inefficient.“One of the biggest problems is all the inconsistencies on campus with regards to waste and recycling in particular. You see a lot of colored bins all over campus, but they mean different things in different places,” senior and Sustainability Action Committee (SAC) member Connor Bloom said.He explained that this is confusing because single-stream recycling requires no sorting. “We really only need one color of bin. So the system is outdated, really.”

“SAC is going to take the information that was presented and look for ways to grow the program and increase recycling across campus.”

While many students were pleased with the change to single stream recycling, which made the practice of recycling simpler and increased recycled materials, the system is not uniformly applied and used, causing uncertainty around the process as a whole.Senior Manager for Sustainability and Natural Resources Jill Robinson hoped to work further with the SAC to ensure that the process is more clear. “We can make our recycling setup more uniform across campus so that it is not confusing in any way. We can work to make it easier for people to recycle and identify the places where mistakes can happen, and [we can] train students, faculty and staff to work together to improve the process,” she said.The Facilities Department’s grounds crew picks up bagged recyclable materials from dorms, faculty housing and public buildings. The dining halls and Grill, on the other hand, have their own dumpsters which are serviced weekly for pickup.After changing contractors, facilities now works with Waste Management (WM), which services the solid waste and recycling needs on campus. After a recent consultation, WM outlined the shortcomings of recycling as it stands currently on campus. WM explained to the Sustainability Advisory Committee (SAC), which is made up of students, teachers and faculty, that despite flaws in the system as it stands, there is enormous potential for greater waste diversion and a more efficient recycling process.Safety and Environmental Compliance Manager Tegan Vassillion, who serves on the SAC, said that the WM analysis highlighted issues for the committee to address. “SAC is going to take the information that was presented and look for ways to grow the program and increase recycling across campus,” she said.The SAC, while concerned with efficiency and management, also has a background in sustainability and hopes to raise tonnage of recycling for a greener campus. Robinson suggested that all community member should familiarize themselves with the impact of each item they own, buy, consume and waste. “Whenever you buy something, think of the entire life cycle of that product: what it is made of, how it is made, where was it made and how much energy is needed to get it to you; what is the useful life of the product, and what will happen to the product after you are done with it. Then you will begin to get a sense of the full environmental impact of a product,” he said.