By Stephen Babcock
Fearing the university was not paying enough attention to recycling, the Students for Environmental Action (SEA) have launched a campaign to increase recycling on campus.
The campaign will focus on both educating students where and what they can recycle, as well as decreasing the overall waste on campus by reducing the size of food containers, among other items.
“A lot of students throw trash in recycling bins, as well as recycling in trash cans. We want to reverse that,” said Kate Allstadt, an SEA member active in the campaign. “In some places, like the dining hall, recycling is pretty good, but when you look at the size of Outtakes containers, they are way too big. Something as small as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich creates a lot of waste.”
To inform students about recycling, SEA has created new signs they want to put up above recycling bins on campus to inform students about what can be recycled.
Directions are especially needed for bottles and cans, Allstadt said.
Peter Lembo, the manager of recycling and solid waste removal on campus, said Northeastern already recycles double that of the rest of Boston, a quarter of disposed material.
Lembo oversees a staff of four, who are responsible for the 500 tons of trash, 375 tons of paper and 200 tons of cardboard the university recycles every year. Twenty tons of bottles and cans are also recycled.
He said SEA’s action would help him greatly, because people placing items into the wrong bins was his “No. 1 headache.”
“When cans get put in with newspapers, that becomes trash because I don’t have time to sort through it,” he said. “This campus does a good job, but we would do a lot better if students were just a little more conscious.”
SEA showed the proposed poster to Lembo, who approved it, and said as long as the advertisement did not upset any other members of the university, the group could post it.
“At this point it comes down to properly informing people on recycling procedures because we can’t really improve our recycling logistics,” said SEA member Michael Forr.
Junior philosophy major Jason Szkola said recycling isn’t promoted on campus, just as SEA contends.
“There’s no information anywhere about what we can recycle. It’s just not encouraged,” he said.
Despite student misconceptions they look to reverse, Forr and other members of SEA who attended last week’s meeting said they were impressed with the logistics that are already in place.
After the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute is demolished this summer to make way for West Village F, Lembo said approximately 80 percent of the building materials will be recycled.
In addition to the environmental benefits, Lembo said recycling was good for the university all around because of the money the university can save by recycling.
“We pay to get our trash taken away, but they pay us for giving them recycled materials,” he said. “It’s a win-win ecologically, as well as monetarily.”
