Recycling made easy

By Brooke Bullock     3/10/11 6:00pm

With the opening of Waste Management's Municipal Recycling Facility, Rice's recycling system switched to single-stream recycling on Monday.Students will be able to place all recyclable materials into a single bin in their room or at designated recycling locations around campus rather than sorting recyclables into different bins themselves.

Manager of Communications for Facilities Engineering and Planning Susann Glenn said that Rice had been wanting to switch to single-stream recycling for a long time. With the opening of the Waste Management facility, many people in the city of Houston and Rice are now able to use single-stream recycling.

"It's been a dream for a really long time," Student Association Environmental Committee Co- Chair Kristina Butler said. "We're really excited about it."

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Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson said that switching to single-stream recycling will be easier on students and staff.

"Since it's so convenient, [single-stream recycling] is greener because you get a larger volume of recyclables," Johnson said.

Johnson said that the new system means that students and staff can recycle more types of plastics and materials - like juice boxes, such as the Juicy Juice type, but not pouches, like CapriSun. Students can recycle plastics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, although plastic bags and Styrofoam cannot be recycled. To identify what type of plastic a container is, the plastic number - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 7 - can be found on the container, usually on the bottom, in the triangle of arrows symbol for recycling.

"I think it's going to have a huge impact," Butler, a Will Rice College senior, said. "A lot of people don't recycle because of indifference or inconvenience, so this will help."

The new system comes at an opportune time to try and raise the amount of recycling at Rice because Rice is competing in Recyclemania, an eight-week long, intercollegiate recycling competition, Johnson said. He said that because of the competition, FE&P and Housing and Dining are already keeping an eye on week-to-week data about how much Rice recycles.

Since the announcement of the single-stream recycling system over spring break to custodial staff, there has already been an increase in recycling on campus through the data collected for Recyclemania. Johnson said he hopes to see recycling continue to increase with students back on campus after the break.

Furthermore, single-stream recycling should be easier for custodial staff to work with, Johnson said. Custodial staff no longer has to worry if a bag of recyclables is contaminated by having plastic and aluminum or paper mixed because of the single-stream recycling system. Even a little bit of trash shouldn't keep custodial staff from recycling a bag of recyclables because Waste Management can handle it, Johnson said.

"I think it's really logical because a lot of people can make mistakes, and then people have to look through to make sure nothing is mixed," Wiess College freshman Triana Touchstone said.

Johnson said that the plant Waste Management has opened is able to sort the recyclables by mechanical, chemical or digital means as it passes through on a conveyor belt, eliminating the need for people to do it before collection.

Johnson also said they hope to take students and custodial staff out to the plant sometime in the next year so that they can see how they are contributing to recycling.

If students need bins - the regular blue bins many students already have - for recycling in their room they can request one from binsrequest@rice.edu.

Any questions concerning recycling on campus can be sent to sustainability@rice.edu.

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