Wondering what to recycle? A guide to campus recycling 

By Sol Ayala

Online Editor

Students can find 10 recycling bins outside public spaces, in the library, resident halls, and specifically the big recycling bin behind Redford apartments are all available options for the Trevecca community.

But, students say it’s hard to know what goes where and they’re not confident they’re doing it right. The bins don’t have instructions on them explaining what can be recycled and what can’t.

“It’s also really unclear what you’re able to recycle,” said Katherine Carter, coordinator for Trevecca Urban Farm. “I think because people don’t see recycling being valued necessarily by the institution, they feel like it’s too much work, or is inconvenient, or even if they put in the effort, it’s not gonna mean anything.”

While many put their items in the recycling bins, not all will be recyclable.

Here is why: Many recyclable items get contaminated when non-recyclables or items with leftover food, liquid, or oil are placed in the bins. Not all plastic can be recycled; there’s a lot more to it than tossing a water bottle in the recycling bin and calling it a day. This contamination can prevent entire batches of materials from being recycled.

Items like plastic bags and wrappers, soiled paper, greasy pizza boxes, styrofoam, and eating utensils cannot be recycled. They usually end up in landfills or in the ocean.

“Recycling is kind of the lowest form of environmental action, but in the sense, we can think it’s like a step into bigger action,” said Jason Adkins, Trevecca Urban Farm faculty administrator. “We used the cardboard for different things on the farm. Which is better than recycling. We re-used it. We put it around trees, and we build gardens.”

It’s not that recycling is bad. It’s certainly better for the environment than landfilling or burning unsorted trash However, this leads to wishful recycling practices instead of effective conservation, said Adkins.

“The campus leadership needs to know that this matters enough to students. It is part of their choice and where they choose to be. If the admission and marketing and executive team got a clear message from the students that this matters to them, then they would be empowered to act,” said Adkins. “I would hope for students to be organized and vocal about this.

Despite the unwittingly confusing recycling directions, the six-yard recycling bin behind Redford gets picked. up twice a week. That’s 52 times a year, carrying 1,200 pounds of recyclable material alone.

A spokesperson for Republic Services, the company Trevecca uses to dispose of its recycling, said they can’t comment on how much of the waste they pick up is actually recyclable because they “can’t disclose customer information.”

“I think students do, I think employees do [both care about recycling],” said Calvin Da Cunha, Trevecca logistics coordinator. “I think they care then; otherwise, the dumpster won’t be full.”

There is no doubt that people care, but a lack of education about recycling can be caused by the lack of information and instructions on the bins provided by the university.

“When I was a student here, there was something that was going around on social media that was very Trevecca-specific, and it was a video of someone opening up one of the trashcans up the hill that was divided into trash, recycling, and they open it up and trash and recycling actually was going all in together,” said Carter.

While that is no longer the case, the bins are separated, nonetheless, and items that do not belong inside the recycling bin are still dumped inside. Republic Services, Trevecca’s waste disposal provider, has clear guidelines on what can and cannot be recycled.

In the recycling containers across campus, place empty, clean, and dry cardboard boxes, plastics one through seven, aluminum and tin cans, empty aerosol cans, and metal food cans/lids, paperback books, and mixed paper (including junk mail).

Remember to keep recyclables free of food and liquid. Just one dirty item can contaminate the receptacle. Once cardboard or paper comes in contact with food or liquid, it can no longer be recycled.

Don’t bag your recyclables; instead, just place them in the bin loosely. Plastic bags can get tangled up in the machinery and hinder the process.

Non-acceptable items that don’t belong in the recycling bin are solid waste, glass (including broken glass), styrofoam, pizza boxes or other food-contaminated cardboard, candy wrappers, paper towels, hardback books, metal or plastic hangers, CDs, food scraps, textiles, sharp or greasy metals, light bulbs, mirrors or window glass.

The Urban Farm makes an effort to minimize and educate as many people as they possibly can. Still, one of the issues impeding the school’s ability to mobilize and improve recycling and composting efforts is the lack of funding.

Adkins mentions the use of an industrial cardboard shredder and the impact that it would bring.

“What I’d love to do if the university would support this and just have all the cardboard down here, we could shred it, we could compost it, and it could just turn it into soil for awesome gardens,” said Adkins. “We would reduce our waste probably by 40 percent on campus, because campus waste is mostly paper and cardboard.”

The farm’s advocacy doesn’t stop with recycling; a visit to the farm grounds and campus proves that their work is more important than recycling.

With different resources such as soldier flies that create nutritious larvae for the chickens, the upkeep of the water from the creek, composting, planting trees on campus and the surrounding communities, the zero waste market, and more, the efforts of the farm goes without saying that there are people that care about the planet and the role the university has.

“At the farm, we save cardboard and we recycle the things we have, but we also don’t have the capacity to educate the entire university to go into the resident halls and teach college students this is what you can recycle, this is what it means to live environmentally friendly,” said Carter.

Carter hopes that Trevecca will be proactive in supporting the formation of an environmental club that will work to educate others on these topics regarding the choice to recycle.