Recycling is back on the University of Idaho campus, beginning Monday, April 3 in the ISUB and Pitman Center.
The previous recycling program was quietly canceled three years ago. The program practiced multi-stream recycling, relying on individuals to properly sort between aluminum, plastic and trash. This often led to mistakes and contamination rates as high as 90%.
“When you see contaminated recyclables it’s hard to know if folks were just misinformed, they didn’t read or they were hoping that something would be recyclable,” Sustainability Director Sarah Dawson said. “Motives are hard to discern, but contamination can be very significant.”
Dawson came to UI six months ago with several years of experience in other university systems. This issue with recycling on campus isn’t a new one.
“Folks are coming from all over the country, and the world, and recycling standards are different in almost every municipality,” Dawson said.
The recycling program’s return can be partially attributed to President Scott Green making it a presidential initiative, helping acquire the $180,000 it takes to run the program.
Sustainability Coordinator Olivia Wiebe explained that with the multi-stream program, workers were individually collecting and sorting recyclables, only for the majority of it to be contaminated anyways. Contamination can occur in many ways, from leftover food to broken glass bottles.
“Commingled recycling and landfill just doesn’t work,” Wiebe said. “You don’t really see the labels till you’re up on top of it, and then you’re throwing it in the wrong hole.”
Switching to single-stream recycling, all recyclables can be placed in the same bin. Aluminum, cardboard and paper can all be grouped together, though Wiebe warned against throwing in glass.
“That’s the big piece. Glass is not accepted in single stream,” she said. “Largely because glass, when it breaks down, can get so small and granular that it’s almost impossible to separate out from the other components.”
The program is purposefully relaunching on a small scale. Indoor recycling at the ISUB and Pitman will be easier to manage starting off. Signs by each bin will hopefully deter students from “wishful recycling.”
“It’s people that have good intentions, and they just want to be able to recycle as much as they can and keep things from going to the landfill,” Dawson said.
The campus needs to understand contamination for the program to remain, making education a key step in the process. The current contractor requires contamination to remain under 5%, according to Wiebe, contrasting with 2018’s 80%-90% contamination rates on campus.
Some of the largest culprits for contamination include paper coffee cups, used paper plates and pizza boxes. So, Wiebe said, when in doubt, throw it out.
Dawson has lived in several states, including Utah, where nearly everything seemed recyclable. In contrast, Moscow is relatively isolated and has been more of a challenge than she anticipated.
“Our trash, for instance, goes over 200 miles one way to get to a landfill, which is shocking to me,” she said. “Every other place… there’s a landfill or an incinerator within a few miles.”
Dawson was also surprised to find that the town doesn’t recycle glass.
“Glass that we take to the recycling center in Moscow is just ground up and turned into an aggregate that’s put on the ground,” Dawson said. “Basically, it’s not actually recycled. I hadn’t experienced that elsewhere.”
For the future, Wiebe and Dawson are hoping to implement a number of sustainability projects across campus. Ideas include recycling in staff offices, collecting glass to recycle out of town and implementing a composting program.
Composting on campus was a small-scale project back in 2020. Food waste from dining and the cafeteria’s kitchen was often collected by bike and heavily reliant on volunteers. The program was short-lived due to contamination of plastic and bones as well as a poor location, according to Wiebe.
To bring composting back, Dawson hopes to obtain a grant for a biodigester to make composting more efficient.
Looking at the bigger picture, Dawson took issue with the marketing behind the recycling industry placing responsibility on consumers.
“(Corporations) who are producing the waste … are putting their hands in the air and saying ‘this is not our problem if its left our facility, it’s the fault of the consumer,’” she said. “I think we have been conditioned to accept that.”
Questions about recycling? Contact the team at [email protected]
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq