Key players from the Global Institute of Sustainability and the University recycling team met with a group of Polytechnic students, faculty and support staff Wednesday afternoon to discuss the state of the recycling program on the Polytechnic campus.
As part of the Undergraduate Student Government's Sustainability Month, Arianne Peterson, of The Global Institute of Sustainability; Ellen Newell, the Tempe campus's assistant director of grounds services; and Dawn Ratcliff, the newly appointed coordinator of the University recycling program visited the Polytechnic campus. They met with Dawn Stark, head of the current recycling initiative at Polytechnic, and Jennifer Niklas, the newly appointed student coordinator of sustainability initiatives.
Stark started a recycling program at the Polytechnic campus in the fall of 2007 after seeing a string of complaints by students and staff on the Poly Insider about the lack of recycling availability on campus.
"At this point, the recycling program is still a grassroots effort," Stark said. "It basically consists of my staff and a few students sorting and removing the recycling bins ourselves."
According to Stark, there are a number of barriers to the efficiency of the recycling program at Polytechnic.
One of the biggest barriers is that when people throw things into the recycling bins that do not belong, such as food, the recyclable material becomes contaminated, and the waste removal company will not accept it.
Another issue is that the waste removal system on Polytechnic is not unified.
The University and all University buildings have their trash removed by services from the city of Mesa.
Residential housing, which accounts for about 600 homes and is run by a housing management company, contracts waste removal services to a private company. And students living in the residence halls have no recycling bins at all.
Stark's team has managed to position recycling bins throughout the student union and in all University departments and office buildings.
The bins in the union alone collect at least 100 pounds of material each week, which Stark said is because of a good effort on the part of Polytechnic residential students.
"Students living in residence halls that do not have a recycling bin bring their recycling down to the ones in the union," she said. "That's good. We've definitely seen good participation."
But Niklas said there is not nearly enough participation as there could be.
"When I sort through the regular bins, I find that 70 to 80 percent of what is thrown away as trash is actually recyclable," Niklas said.
Reach the reporter at: kbielski@asu.edu.
