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Ohio State Looks for an Effective Recycling System: University's Rate of Recycled Trash Lags Behind Its Peers

Posted on: Friday, 16 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Ryan Loew, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jun. 16--One way to gauge how well Ohio State's campus recycling program is working is to ask students.

"I didn't even know that you could" recycle, said sophomore Maggie Roe, 20. "There are so many trash cans around everywhere, but I don't see any recycling bins."

Senior Adam Chawansky said he's seen a few of them.

"Maybe if you get lucky, you'll see a container on the way to class," said Chawansky, 22. "You really have to hunt them down if you're trying to recycle."

With more than 50,000 students and about 25,000 employees, Ohio State is a goodsized city within Columbus, and it produces tons of waste -- less than a quarter of which is recycled.

The university has been recycling in some fashion for 42 years. It has created and discarded several programs since 1993, the year the university hired its first full-time program coordinator. And it has launched several pilot programs, some of which have been recycled themselves.

"There's a lot of improvement that can be made in the system that's in place," said Christina Redman, the latest recycling coordinator.

Redman said she has developed a proposal for a pilot project that would move the university's current, somewhat disjointed recycling program to a more modern, singlestream process.

That means students would be able to throw away all their recyclables into one bin, rather than separate bins.

She said that would make it easier for students and faculty members, who currently have to find separate, specific containers for paper, boxes, cans and plastics -- if they can find them at all.

"Just the fact that you have to remember to put things in separate containers -- I think that makes it harder," Redman said.

Compared with other universities, Ohio State lags in the amount it recycles. A report from 2000 showed that the university recycled 20 percent to 23 percent of its waste stream, while the University of Michigan recycled 31 percent. Miami University recycled 55 percent of its waste at that time.

Right now at Ohio State, those interested in recycling have to find containers in designated trash rooms in buildings.

Custodians collect the material, which is sorted and taken to Smurfit-Stone Recycling Co.

Carrie Dellesky, president of Students for Recycling, said too many students toss trash into the recycling bins.

"If people don't recognize it as a recycling bin ... then it's ineffective," Dellesky said.

Cost is another issue.

Redman said she hopes single-stream recycling will streamline the process and make it more cost-effective.

Aparna Ravipaty, director of the Office of Energy Services and Sustainability, which supervises campus recycling, said she did not know how much the university has spent on the recycling programs.

Ravipaty said switching to single-stream recycling would translate into more materials being collected. Cardboard would be the only material collected separately.

Redman said she also is proposing putting more containers at more locations.

The pilot program Redman is working on would place single-stream recycling bins in seven campus buildings for about two months.

For the program to work, everyone needs to be committed, said Terrie TerMeer, deputy chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Recycling and Litter Prevention.

Ohio State, she said, has all the necessary ingredients for a successful recycling program: interested students, faculty members and leadership.

"If all those things click, that's a successful program," she said.

rloew@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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