 "Photo: Chrony Design Squad")
After years of planning and searching for funding, a campus-wide recycling program is scheduled to begin June 1.
Currently, recycling bins are not widely found on campus. Newspaper collection bins have been put next to many newsstands around campus, but other collection bins are only found in select areas.
The current recycling program is run on "a non-coordinated, volunteer basis," said Cory Higgins, director for plant operations. "We're trying to make recycling more convenient."
Last spring, recycling test areas with bins to collect paper, cans and bottles were set up in a few buildings around campus. After recycling bins were provided, the amount of recycled waste more than doubled in test areas, prompting U administrators to expand the effort across campus.
The U recently set aside nearly $310,000 to expand the recycling program to most of campus. These funds will provide a recycling bin for paper in every classroom as well as offices and residence halls, a cardboard compactor and a new building to store compacted cardboard until it is sold.
Currently, about 20 percent of the U's garbage is being recycled. With the new program, organizers estimate that 40 to 50 percent of the U's garbage will be recycled. In time, with more waste being recycled and sold, Higgins said, the new program will pay for itself.
Bins in classrooms will be used only for collecting mixed paper, which includes newspaper, magazines and office paper.
The push to create a campus-wide recycling program has been led, in part, by past student government leaders.
In 2005, members of the Associated Students of the University of Utah helped raise $95,000 to hire Cascadia, a waste management consulting group, to study the U's waste flow. After digging through garbage cans and dumpsters on campus, Cascadia determined that nearly 70 percent of the U's trash could be recycled, most of it being paper.
"People these days are a little bit more cognizant of environmental issues," said Patrick Reimherr, director of the new ASUU recycling board. Student leaders recently restored the Recycling Board after it was put under another board last year.
"We're all part of this big sustainability program," said Que Collard, associate director of plant operations. "The bottom line is that this program won't work unless we have the cooperation of the students."
