Third-year College student Katy Shrum and her New Dorms suitemates had good intentions when they arrived at the University two years ago. They obtained a recycling bin for their suite and filled it with newspapers and soda cans. Then they filled it up some more, until it overflowed onto the floor.
"No one took it out, and it just kept piling up, so in the end [Housing] took it away," Shrum said.
Shrum, who now lives in Brown, no longer recycles in her room.
"There's not enough space," Shrum said. "I haven't seen recycling bins in anyone's room this year."
Recycling is a noble goal, most agree. It is beneficial to the environment and many types of recycling save the University money.
In practice, though, recycling at the University gets more complicated. For busy students like Shrum, the concept of recycling becomes less attractive when a pile of bottles and paper needs to be driven to the recycling park at the foot of Observatory Hill or sorted into containers in the dorms.
University recycling officials say they are working to make recycling easier for students. Every University building now boasts at least one recycling bin and the recycling program and its student employees have stepped up education efforts, distributing mugs and magnets and adding conservation advocates to every first-year dorm's house council.
The recycling program has grown enormously since its inception in 1991, when the University recycled barely 5 percent of its waste. In 2002, over 38 percent of disposable material was recycled.
"It went from recycling is an inconvenience to 'When are you guys going to get recycling to my building?'" said Cheryl Gomez, director of utilities for University Facilities Management.
Although the University easily meets the state-mandated 25 percent recycling rate, it still falls short of its self-imposed goal of 50 percent.
A peek in trash cans around Grounds demonstrates just how many bottles, cans and papers end up in landfills, said fourth-year College student Jenny Jones, president of Student Environmental Action and a student employee of University Recycling.
"It's really frustrating," Jones said. "I go to throw something away and I see huge piles of trash and most of it can be recycled."
In an ideal world, 85 percent of waste on Grounds would be recycled, said Denny Clark, the official who oversees trash and recycling for Facilities Management.
"That's on a utopian campus," Clark said. "But if people thought about what they were doing and made a conscious effort to seek out recycling containers, we'd be able to get closer to that goal."
Saving the environment, saving money
The recycling program not only saves the environment, it also saves University money -- an idea touted by the recycling program's motto, "There are better places for education dollars than filling a hole in the ground."
The dollars saved through recycling are a boon in a time of tight budgets, Clark said.
It costs $98 to send a ton of waste to a landfill and $86 to recycle it. With more than 10,000 tons of waste produced at the University every year and the amount increasing with ever-larger entering classes and new construction projects, the $14 difference adds up.
The University gets paid for the aluminum cans and white and colored paper it recycles. Other items normally cost money to recycle, but the University benefits from producing unusually large amounts of paper waste in a small geographic area, Clark said. Companies who resell recyclables are willing to pick up plastic and glass bottles from the University at no cost because they can save money on transportation.
"It's just a real win-win situation for us," Gomez said.
"Things can get really smelly"
The challenge for the recycling program is getting University students and staff to participate.
A perusal of a recycling bin on the third floor of Cabell Hall one Thursday afternoon found magazines and candy wrappers mingled with aluminum cans. A trash can touched the side of the same bin.
"It's a really big, huge education problem," said fourth-year College student Gina Casciano, who is employed by the recycling program as an education coordinator. "A lot of people here probably didn't recycle at home, or just don't think about it."
What many students do not realize is that items in recycling bins must be sorted by University employees, Casciano said. Trash, food or half-full soda cans mixed in with cans, bottles and newspapers can cause mold and make the job of sorting recycling a disgusting one.
"Things can get really smelly," Casciano said. "It can be a week between the time it gets thrown away and the time it gets sorted."
Clark agreed.
"Obviously people are lazy," he said. "If people had good intentions, one person comes along and ruins the whole thing -- when in doubt, throw it out."
Solo cups and beer cans
As the recycling program has grown, the Greek system also has gotten in the act.
Four years ago, one fraternity brother decided to begin a fraternity recycling program. He delivered barrels to various houses for depositing empty beer cans and drove around on Sunday mornings to pick up the contents, giving the proceeds to charity. When he left, the program died out. But some fraternity and sorority members are trying to revive the program this year.
Fraternities are a visible representation of student apathy toward recycling, said second-year College student Taylor Hollis, a fraternity member and an employee of the recycling program.
"U.Va. students, for the most part, are so-so recyclers," Hollis said. "I don't think frats are any more difficult than the rest of the student body."
Others said getting Greeks to recycle has been difficult in the past.
"It's so hard to get fraternities moving in the direction of recycling," Casciano said.
Third-year College student Crawford Hawkins, Inter-Fraternity Council community service chair, said the students involved in the fraternity recycling initiative hope the program will become a model for others.
"The Charlottesville community itself does not do such a good job of recycling, so we're trying to make a statement," Hawkins said. "We hope to learn from the U.Va. recycling program and expand out into the community from there, beginning with the Greek system."
Nine fraternities and nine sororities have signed on to the pilot program that began last weekend. Most are fraternities that are barred from buying kegs by their national chapters and use cans at parties.
A recycling opportunity exists for fraternities that buy kegs as well, Casciano said. Solo, the company that manufactures the sturdy red and blue cups often used at parties, also makes a smaller, clear cup that is recyclable.
A question of commitment
University recycling officials said they desired increased administration participation in their recycling efforts.
"It would certainly be nice if the administration would make some sort of statement or encourage the University to take part in the program," Clark said. "It would be nice if there was some sort of mandate, or edict or encouragement from the central administration."
University Spokesperson Carol Wood said the recycling program has the full backing of the administration and voiced pride for the award-winning department.
"There's no other institution in the state of Virginia that has either the staff or the funding equal to what the University has dedicated to its recycling program," Wood said. "While there may not be a statement out there, this program has University-wide support -- I do believe recycling is part of the culture of this place."
Certainly, some students go out of their way to recycle.
First-year College student Lauren Ramos and her roommate built their own recycling bin out of a cardboard box and a plastic bag when they had difficulty finding an official bin.
"It just didn't feel right to be wasting all that stuff and not to recycle it," Ramos said.
The recycling program is working hard to make it second nature for students to throw cans and papers in bins instead of trash cans, Casciano said.
"There's a huge amount of U.Va. students that don't recycle," she said. "Recycling needs to be part of everyone's daily life."
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