Chris Banyas
Staff Writer
It is estimated that so far this year the recycling program at Idaho State University has collected 85 tons of material.
Several recent grants have helped the program become what it is today, one of them coming from the Coca-Cola Company.
This grant was not for a certain dollar amount, but instead for 78 large recycling bins.
“Actually we got that last year. That was for the recycling bins that went out on campus in the academic areas. Part of the stipulation with that was that we weigh and measure all of the recycling that came out of it and report back to them,” said Loretta Taylor, custodial services manager.
There were only 48 colleges nationwide chosen for the grant.
A more recent grant for a little over $2,700 from ASISU provided 350 smaller recycling bins for each individual classroom.
“There’s a few universities that are doing recycling but not a whole lot,” said Taylor. “I think it will bring a lot more national awareness to ISU, saying these guys are being proactive. Not a lot of campuses in the United States are doing it, so we’re trying to build off of that.”
The majority of the recyclables are taken off-site for the actual recycling process by an outside company.
This process generates between $300 and $1,000 dollars every three months, depending on volume and materials.
ISU recycling also started a bio-diesel recycling program which does operate on campus, providing fuel for several vehicles called gators.
For an institution that did not exist a little over three years ago, the program has grown by leaps and bounds.
“What happened was we were directed to clean up all of the outside areas where people were stacking recycling because they didn’t want to throw it in the trash,” said Taylor. “It became a fire hazard, so what we were asked to do was to clean it all up. So in a custodial-wide effort in 24 hours we cleaned up the whole campus.”
Initially there were no designated recycling employees.
“I asked for volunteers from our department to come in and make a team. We had several teams going at one time. They would rotate every week,” said Taylor.
There are currently three full-time recycling employees at ISU who handle the entire program, sorting the majority of the recyclables by hand.
Stephen McMichael, Thomas Landon and Michael Johns are the three passionate workers responsible for much of the program’s success.
“I’m very proud of the program itself and these guys in particular because they were specifically chosen for this job,” said Taylor. “I’m very passionate about it because it’s something that we started. There was basically no recycling when we started.”
The recycling program has had to face its share of difficulties.
“Funding and awareness, those are the two main issues that we have with this program,” said Taylor. “The Green Up Club did a survey just recently on awareness for the recycle bins. They went around asking everybody if they knew where the bins were on campus.”
The majority of students surveyed were unaware of where these bins were located.
ASISU recently designed a sticker which is being placed on these bins to help them stand out.
“What a lot of people don’t seem to realize is that this earth is only so big and there’s so many things that we could do to save product and everything else,” said Taylor. “We’re running ourselves into ruin. The more recycling that we do the better off we’re going to be.”
In the future, the program employees hope to include all of ISU housing.
There are also plans in the works to implement water-free urinals, and paper-free hand dryers to save on a paper cost that is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
