Three years ago, a recycling task force was assembled with the primary purpose of increasing Waynesburg University’s recycling efforts and decreasing the institution’s impact on the environment. The institution was not adequately recycling, said Janet Paladino, associate professor of Biology and task force advisor. Now, despite three years of effort to inform the university of the problem, Paladino and other task force members claim the administration has not properly followed through with the task force’s suggestions. Though the task force started with initiative and seemingly was making progress, said Paladino, it ultimately failed to attain the level of efficiency that was originally intended for it to reach. Now, Paladino said she hopes the university will change recycling companies to be able to better tackle the persistent issue. To properly deal with an increase in recyclables, senior and former task force member Taylor Garrett said the university would have to leave Green Arc, the company that currently handles the institution’s recyclables.
“We need to recycle with a new company,” said Garrett. “Green Arc is an amazing organization and they do a great job with the limited resources that they have, but they, as a company, do not have the manpower, nor the resources they barely have those resources to be able to recycle what we are currently putting out. If recycling efforts are to expand at all, we definitely need to look into a new company.”
With Green Arc, Garrett said the company can only handle type one and two plastics, which severely limits what can actually be processed through the service. Terry Sattler, director of facilities, said adding a recycling program through the company that currently handles the trash on campus would work well but come at an additional cost.
“Most of our trash gets picked up by Waste Management,” said Sattler. “Waste Management does have a recycling program a single stream program where all of the recycling that we get would go into a single stream process and it gets segregated out in their plant. Having said that, there’s a cost to that.”
Currently, Green Arc is essentially a free service for the university, as, according to Garrett, it only costs the university $10 for every pickup. To implement a recycling solution with Waste Management, Sattler said each recycling dumpster needed would cost roughly $400. All told, Sattler said recycling through Waste Management could cost the university thousands of dollars per month. Although the university would be saving money by having less trash with adequate recycling through Waste Management, Sattler said the estimated savings wouldn’t cover the total cost.
“There is already a cost for us to get rid of the trash, so the things we can divert away from our landfilled trash is only a benefit to us,” said Sattler. “Having said that, when you compare apples to apples, the cost of one dumpster of trash is less than one dumpster of recycle material so there is a diversion, but it really doesn’t direct to a budgetary positive.”
Garrett said neither she nor the task force expected the university to pay substantial amounts of money to support recycling efforts. However, the conversation they expected to start with the administration never happened three years ago.
“[Administration] have not been super forthcoming with help to try and bolster the recycling efforts,” said Garrett. “ Although I don’t expect them to pay an arm and a leg for Waste Management… I think the open communication we were trying to accomplish definitely didn’t happen.”
Though Paladino and Garrett indicated Provost Dr. Dana Baer would be an administrative contact for the recycling program, Baer indicated that she did not have information about recycling at Waynesburg and said that it was her belief that the Student Senate oversaw the program. Moreover, Baer specified she had not had a conversation with Paladino or Garrett about recycling on campus. According to Garett, the efforts to open communication between the task force and the administration began three years ago when the task force was assembled with half a dozen students, who voluntarily met every week for an entire school year seeking to make an impact on campus. Through data collected in 2014, Garrett said it was determined Waynesburg University only recycled about one percent of all waste. Sattler said he could not attribute a number to the recycling on campus; however Sattler said efforts could be doubled or even tripled. According to Paladino, this diversion rate in the university’s waste stream is uncharacteristically small, as most colleges average closer to twenty or thirty percent. Garrett said the task force knew that without the support of the student body, the cause wasn’t likely to be supported. To determine the willingness of students to properly recycle, Garrett and the task force put together a challenge for selected residence halls. Garrett said the results of the challenge were drastic, with some dorms tripling output numbers. After encouraging dorms to more heavily recycle, Garrett said Burns and Denny recycled nearly 15 times as much as they had been doing before the challenge. Additionally, Martin Hall had not recycled before the challenge, but afterwards collected 42 pounds of recyclables. As the task force built a case behind increasing recycling efforts on campus, Paladino said she was pleased with the apparent reception of the group’s efforts at the administrational level.
“We really were very encouraged that the administration was going to somehow contribute to the effort,” said Paladino. “We had a few education seminars and then we had a [presentation and] administration came. The provost came [Dr. Jacklyn Core] at the time and a couple other people came, and we explained to them we were recycling [less thantwo percent] of our waste.”
Garrett conducted the presentation, not only with the goal of gaining full support from the institution, but also to demonstrate that the student body fully supported the cause as well. The support of the students went as deep as the Student Senate, as it agreed to contribute part of its budget to purchase additional recycling bins for the task force.
“I was presenting this information to administration to show that students really do want to recycle this was not tied to the presentation, but this was part of it,” said Garrett.
After presenting in front of the administration and raising enough money to purchase around 30 new recycling receptacles, Paladino said she thought the task force had done enough work to gain support from the university.
“I championed the cause because we believed and I think the students also believed if we could show and demonstrate that we would put money into this, and it was important to the students to put money into this, then the administration would follow and also support this,” said Paladino. However, Paladino said seemingly neither of those goals were accomplished within the administration despite the year-long effort of the task force. Only a few weeks into the 2015-2016 academic school year, Paladino said she received a phone call from someone she believed worked in facilities who allegedly informed her that the school could not properly handle the increased recycling efforts.
“I get a call from somebody that I didn’t know, I guess it was somebody that was working facilities… and they said, ‘we can’t handle all [these recyclables,] there is no way we can handle all [this], and that is the last we heard of it,” said Paladino. “ We used to recycle we don’t anymore.”
Sattler indicated that he was unaware of the specific phone call, but since that point, the task force has disbanded, new administration has moved in and recycling still hasn’t consistently been on campus according to Paladino. Along with that, Paladino said the efforts of all those on the task force were left behind without a proper explanation or solution.
“It was very encouraging to see these students really be interested in this,” said Paladino. “ But the sadness is that it all fell apart I’m not going to spend time on something that isn’t going to be supported.”
Although implementing a new recycling program on campus could substantially cost the university, Paladino said the school needs to be looking beyond the monetary investment and instead be looking at the faith-based mission.
“I know that there are financial concerns in the university and that this is potentially not something they can address right now,” said Paladino.“I’m not trying to say this is the most important thing the most important thing is educating students but we have a Christian mission in this university, which I take very seriously, and that Christian mission is creation care.”