Of the 13,000 tons of waste generated by the University community last year, 5,700 was reused instead of going to a landfill. But despite these encouraging figures, and two prestigious awards establishing the University recycling program as one of the best in the country, officials say there's still room for improvement.
"There's not enough environmental awareness on campus," said Scott Jarrell, a University recycling operations manager. "There's not enough activism in general."
For instance, a new housing policy shows a discouraging trend in students' environmental awareness.
This fall, University Housing did not provide dormitory rooms with recycling bins as they have in the last several years because students misused them, housing officials said. Instead of putting paper and other recyclable items in the bins, many used the bins as tables, book shelves, coolers, or even threw them away in the woods or dumpsters.
Jarrell was quick to point out that the University has many environmentally conscientious students, and acknowledged the recycling bins did take up a lot of room in residence halls. But he maintains the student body does not seem to be as environmentally aware as colleges in the western part of the United States.
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Apathy is the major obstacle the recycling staff is working to overcome, recycling officials said.
With an award-winning staff and support from the University, the recycling division should be able to divert at least half of the trash that students, faculty and staff generate on Grounds, said recycling manager Dennis Clark. Divert means doing something with waste other than dumping it in a landfill. Besides being recycled, or turning one material into another, some waste can be composted or reused in other ways. One example is the Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory program at the Medical Center, which ships outdated, though unused, medical supplies to needy countries instead of throwing it away.
Last year, Facilities Management diverted about 37 percent of the University's trash, a 7 percent gain from the year before, and much higher than the state's mandated diversion of 25 percent. But recycling workers agree that the number can be much higher.
Clark said he understands why people are reluctant to recycle.
"It's tradition," he said. Consciously thinking about reducing waste is a state of mind, and it's hard to change people's behaviors. In this affluent age, many people have grown up without worrying about how much they're throwing away, he added.
University recycling has been trying to improve its presence on Grounds, adding many recycling bins at bus stops and other high trafficked areas.
So far, it's going well. At the last home football game, the recycling bins along the pedestrian routes to the stadium were filled to the brim, Jarrell said.
The recycling center is also trying to motivate students with a recycling contest. For the contest, students can write their e-mail ID's on the bottom of aluminum cans all semester before they recycle them at the University. Recycling staff plans to randomly pull out the cans with addresses, selecting winners every other week. Prizes, include free dinners, movies and car washes. The grand prize is a stereo.
But if the economy continues to slump, students - and all Americans - may have a much more real motivation to conserve resources.
Sending trash to a landfill costs money. For instance, after the Ivy Landfill in Albemarle County stopped accepting trash Sept. 1, the cost to dump University construction waste increased more than 30 percent, from $35 a ton to $46 a ton, Clark said. And that figure does not cover the cost to haul it to the landfill, the cost of the contract with Waste Management and the salaries of the University employees who pick up the trash.
Last year, the University generated 623 tons of construction waste.
And since the Ivy Landfill's closure, the University has had to treat its construction waste as regular solid waste, sending it to other landfills around the state, which is less cost effective than when it was shipped to Ivy and more wasteful.
Regular trash from the University is now driven to a transfer station in Ivy and then transferred to other landfills around the state. The cost for the University to dispose of all solid waste is around $75 a ton.
Each of the 21 divisions of the University is responsible for the cost of its own recycling and trash removal. According to Clark, the more each division recycles, the more money they save for other things, like teachers.
He said every division of the University is billed every month for its waste disposal. As a potential recession looms, office workers and students may become more frugal with how much they throw away. In times of economic stability, people are more wasteful. As an example, he told how his mother, who grew up in the Great Depression, would chide him for not using all the blank space on a piece of paper before going to the next one.
Recycling costs money, of course, but not as much as it costs to truck waste to a landfill, he said.
In addition to saving money, recycling also lessens the pressure on landfills around the state. Virginia is the second largest importer of waste in the country, Clark said. Some impoverished counties in the Commonwealth operate landfills to generate income rather than raising property taxes.
But, like the Ivy Landfill, the state's landfills are becoming full with trash from all over the nation. Clark said that even some of the debris from the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington may end up in Virginia landfills, so Virginians must try to conserve resources as much as possible.
"Generally, people want to do the right thing," Clark said. "If it's easy and convenient for people to participate, they will."
The walls in the waiting room of the University Recycling facility hold numerous awards. Clark's office walls are also adorned with honors, including "Vermont Recycler of the Year," a reward he got in his home state before coming to the University in 1997. And, before he leaves, he hopes to fill the walls with a lot more.
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