Returning members of the campus community may have noticed a difference in the placement and prevalence of recycling bins. This is a new effort to make recycling more effective, which is caused by changes to the standards set by the recycling industry.

The root of the change is that China used to accept between 10 and 15 percent contamination in the recycling that was sent from abroad to be processed. Now, China only accepts 0.5 percent contamination, according to Waste Management, one of the biggest collectors of garbage and recycling in the U.S.

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“The basic problem is that China has become very particular about what recyclables they will take, and at the same time there is very little market for a lot of things that we used to recycle,” explained Pamela Silver, Ph.D., Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. “And then the third problem is that the recycling industry now has sorting tools and machinery that is very sensitive to contaminants.”

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In order to follow the standards set by the markets accepting recyclables, Waste Management had to change how their operations worked, which funneled down to the Behrend campus. In February, Waste Management told Behrend the day before their standards changed that the way the campus had been recycling would no longer suffice. If the campus exceeded the contamination limit, they would be charged by Waste Management to get the recycling taken as trash, resulting in thousands of dollars in fees.

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Randy Geering, Senior Director of Operations, was tasked with figuring out a way to make recycling on campus meet the new standards. First off, all the recycling bins were pulled, which created pushback from concerned students, faculty, and staff. In order to explain what was going on, Geering sent out emails with articles and an explanation of the global issue, then set to explain Behrend’s role.

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In order to best educate the campus, a forum was held in August. Representatives from Waste Management, the Erie County Planning Department, and Behrend spoke at the forum. Valerie Zivkovich, senior Plastic Engineering Technology student, gave a presentation about a campus recycling project that her research partner, Oliva Dubin, also a senior plastic Engineering Technology student, and her are working on. The two plan to collect plastic bottles and plastic cups from around campus, turn them into plastic pellets, and make the plastic into a new product in the plastics engineering lab or sell the pellets.

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“We were basically there to pitch our idea about starting our own system in the plastics lab,” said Zivkovich of how they got involved with the forum. After the forum, the representative from Waste Management told Zivkovich about a grant to help with local environmentally minded projects. Zivkovich and Dubin applied for it and were awarded $3,000 for their research.

The team plans to hire students to help with the project, get new trash bins, purchase new equipment, and educate students about recycling. The plastics they will be targeting are numbers one and five. which can be found on the bottom of a plastic container.

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“We think that’s what going to generate the most amount of recycling on campus,” explained Dubin. Plastics one and five generally make up single-use plastic bottles and cups, like what comes out of a vending machine or the Starbucks cups from Paws.

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Since the forum, the campus Maintenance and Operations has tried to find the best solution to limiting contamination and maximizing the amount of recycling.

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“The process we came up with is the central recycling areas within each building. If you walk around you’ll see a series of like four recycling bins,” explained Geering. “Our other issue was transportation since we couldn’t carry it around in a plastic bag.” Plastic bags are no longer able to be recycled through single stream, but can be put in special plastic bag recycling bins, some of which are located the Walmart and Giant Eagle.

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The change in how the bins are set up is complemented by signs that explain how to recycle properly, including what is recyclable and what is not.

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“The companies are not equipped to handle that kind of stuff. It’s wishful,” said Geering “The reality is that it gets to the sorting facilities and it gets put in the trash pile and it gets taken to the landfill and thrown away.” Rather than contaminating items that could be recycled, everyone is encouraged to follow the motto “when in doubt, throw it out.”

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Housing and Food Services has also made changes to how students living on-campus are able to recycle. Like in the past, students have recycling bins in their rooms and apartments and they can decide whether or not to recycle. The difference is to the dumpsters that collect the recycling.

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“We installed some devices on the dumpsters, just like the campus did, that will restrict the ability for someone to just throw a bag in or to throw things in that will contaminate the recycling stream,” explained Mike Lindner, Director of Housing and Food Services. The number of dumpsters has been restricted and the students, making it harder to recycle. The benefit to that is that people who threw their garbage or contaminated recycling into the recycling bin in the past will not take the time and effort to put the wrong things into the recycling bins. “We can claim we had this great high participation rate, but if they’re throwing every recycling dumpster in the trash, because one or two people contaminate a whole dumpster, they just throw it into the landfill.”

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A common theme that has come up throughout this change is the importance of being mindful. That includes thinking about what can or cannot be recycled rather than just throwing it into the bin, rinsing out recycling with food waste in it, and making the choice to buy reusable things before recyclable things.

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“The key message that needs to be conveyed is that it is really important to recycle smart and not wishfully because wishful recycling actually makes stuff that could be recycled useless,” said Silver.

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Information about recycling can be found on the signs by the recycling bins around campus. Together the campus community can create change in how recycling is perceived and utilized, whether that includes educating our campus, the community, or thinking of innovative ways to solve this complex issue.