Recycling bins removed from the MUC

In part one of this four-week series about sustainability, The Volante investigates recycling on campus.

In Coyote Village, a sign stands where a recycling bin used to be.

At a side entrance to the residence hall, a sign tells students to bring recyclables to the trash compactor, because recycling has ceased until further notice.

University of South Dakota Associate Dean of Students Phil Covington said the bins were removed because students were placing more trash than recyclable material in the bins.

Covington said planning is currently in progress on how to reintroduce the bins.

Recycling of paper, plastics and aluminum cans still continues in other residence halls, where student employees take recyclables to the city’s recycling center. The crew also handles the paper bins in the Student Services suite.

While recycling still occurs in residence halls, the bins in the Muenster University Center have been absent this year.

Bob Oehler, assistant vice president of USD Facilities Management, who oversees the custodial program, said he is not aware of any recycling program on campus.

It is Oehler’s first semester at USD, and he said he is not aware the items in the recycling bins were recycled last year, and said he heard a club or student organization that no longer exists emptied them last year.

Jill Ward, director of the Muenster University Center, said no such student organization existed, and recycling has always been handled by Facilities Management.

Junior Morgan Appley is the cofounder of the university’s Sustainability Club. She said recycling everything starts with recycling.

“It’s the basic foundation,” she said. “If we can’t utilize that resource, how can we get any tasks completed?”

Not recycling items in the MUC’s recycling bins takes away from the university’s credibility, Appley said. She said if recycling ends up not being profitable for the university, then it will be difficult to implement the practice.

“If demand is made from the student population, then it will happen,” Appley said. “That is the only way it’s profitable.”

Oehler said a recycling program usually takes a full-time staff and its own department. When he worked at the University of Wisconsin, the recycling program had six staff members.

“Recycling is dependent on local recycling assets,” Oehler said. “Vermillion has a center, but there are limitations on what we can bring.”

In order to run a recycling program, it would need to include staff to empty the bins, sort through the recycled material to eliminate trash and trucks to haul away the recycled material to a recycling center.

Oehler said a sustainability committee will likely be formed to address increased sustainability, along with marketing what USD currently does to go green, such as running the majority of its electricity off hydropower and wind turbines.

“Just because it happens in the residence halls doesn’t mean it can be extrapolated to the rest of campus,” Oehler said.

Difficulties with recycling occur when individuals place non-recyclable items into recycling bins, therefore contaminating the batch. Unless the trash is sorted from the recyclable items, the batch cannot be recycled, and recycling centers will not accept the batch.

The solution to contaminated loads is preventing students from placing trash into them, or hiring a staff to sort through the trash. Additionally, recycling is not always profitable or economical for a university.
buy flagyl online https://www.conci.com/wp-content/languages/new/online/flagyl.html no prescription

Recycling campus-wide was practiced during move-in day, when crews from Facility Management stood guard at cardboard collection points. Keeping cardboard out of trash bins allowed the bins to be emptied less, saving the university money, along with keeping piles of trash off campus.

Oehler estimates five different roll-offs of 40 yards of cardboard were delivered to the Missouri Valley Recycling Center in Vermillion.

“Recycling in particular is especially important, because it comes to people’s minds right away,” Assistant Professor of Sustainability Meghann Jarchow said. “Sustainability is bigger than recycling.”