What actually happens to recycling on campus?

JORDAN FOX
COPY EDITOR

10/28/2024

Rumors around campus have been spreading that recycling does not get recycled but instead ends up being thrown away with the rest of the trash. As someone who grew up volunteering at a recycling center, I found this incredibly disheartening to hear. 

However, after speaking directly to those in charge of waste on campus, I believe this rumor to be false and spread by those who have only seen half of the picture. 

“We have two recycling bins: we have one here at Trower – it is not only for campus but it’s also for community use, as well. For larger items, …we decided to… purchase a compactor for just recycling so now on Charles Road across from the baseball field we have a compactor for trash and we have a compactor for recycling only,” said Ryan Stoudt, Director of Facilities and Service Management.

“Our [Waste Management Personnel] makes two trips: [they make] one for trash and then [they go] back around and does another for recycling; …recycling all gets thrown into the compactor, gets compacted and then sent to Granger. When Granger picks it up, they take it to a sorting center in which they sort it [and] take out anything that’s undesirable,” said Stoudt. 

The “Granger” he referenced is Granger Waste Services in Lansing. In 2022, Alma College made the switch to Granger’s recycling program which “[consists] of single-stream recycling, which means all accepted recyclables go into the container together without having to be sorted… With single-stream recycling, collected recyclables go to a facility that uses technology for efficient automated sorting,” according to Granger. 

“[The] housekeepers take the recycle bins separate from the trash; the trash goes out to the loading decks… Recycling is separated and we keep it near our closets until [the Waste Management Personnel]… picks it up, and then… removes it from us and takes it to Charles Road where there are both trash and recycle bins,” said Mary Anderson, National Housekeeping Supervisor. 

It seems like recycling is, in fact, happening on campus. But why are students so adamant that it’s not? 

“I think the problem is we don’t know what’s happening, right? We at least know it’s not getting sorted and we don’t know if it’s going into the recycling bin or if it’s just getting dumped in the trash; it’s pretty ambiguous,” said Charlotte Howald (‘25), President of Leaders for Environmental Awareness, Protection and Sustainability (LEAPS). 

Fair. How are students supposed to know what happens to campus recycling when all they see is the same person who picks up trash take it to presumably the same location where trash is sent?

Also, I don’t want to discredit said students by saying that recycling is always recycled because that’s not true, either. 

“If [trash mixed with recycling] can be separated, [the Waste Management Personnel] will separate it. But, a lot of times, we just have to throw the recycling away, especially if it’s food… It does happen, Qdoba a lot – they dump their half-full pops in there… and it gets it all wet and nasty so we just throw it away,” said Anderson. 

However, we can’t expect every student to know how to recycle, especially when there is no signage telling us what to recycle or where to put cardboard in the trash rooms because that also gets recycled. 

At the end of the day, we need to be patient with each other. Students should ask questions instead of assuming and facilities should communicate more openly because how are students supposed to know that throwing trash into recycling is wrong if no one corrects them?

“[Furthermore]… the biggest thing we can do is just not produce waste to begin with. So, that is us limiting what we consume or how we consume it. That’s maybe finding a way that we can bring back… the green [to-go] boxes in [Hamilton Commons]… instead of the throwaway ones [etc.],” said Howald.