Tom Walker
Junior Editor
A reasonable person would probably assume that what they put into a blue recycling bin gets recycled, but, at Sewanee, that isn’t the case. Sara McIntyre, Sewanee’s Sustainability Coordinator, tells all, “Nothing in the blue [recycling bins] is being recycled.” The recycling bins can be found in most academic buildings and have slots for paper, plastic, and cans. While the contents of the recycling bins currently go to the landfill, it hasn’t always been that way. McIntyre explained that “In the blue bins, at least some of the materials were being recycled at some point in the past. My understanding is that we lost a provider.”
Previously, Sewanee’s recycling was handled by our waste management provider, but after switching waste management companies, the University was informed that the new company “would not be doing the recycling piece.” So, the University lost the mechanism it used to handle its recycling. On the current state of the recycling bins, McIntyre said, “It’s terrible, it’s horrible, it’s no good, very bad. I’m of two minds about it. One part of me wants to put signs up above every one [of the cans] saying ‘this is a fraud.’ My other mind about it is that while it’s not getting recycled, it is important to maintain the behavior.”
The behavior she’s referring to is self-sorting. While it may seem obvious, self-sorting can be more complex than one might think. For instance, Sewanee’s plastic was previously recycled by men McIntyre lovingly described as “dudes with trucks.” The recycling facilities that the dudes with trucks delivered to would only accept bottles with necks narrower than the base. Any yogurt containers or clam shells contaminated the plastic recycling even though they were made out of plastic. McIntyre said that contamination ultimately “lost us the contract with [the] dudes with trucks for plastics.”
Despite the loss of multiple providers, there are still ways to recycle in Sewanee. Cardboard, which is flattened and put into cardboard recycling areas, paper put into shred bins, and any recycling taken to the Convenience Center or at the University Facilities Management warehouse on 191 Kennerly Avenue (often simply called “Kennerly”), are being recycled.
McIntyre is working to improve recycling, but many of the solutions require substantial funding. To explain how expensive recycling can be, she said, “Let’s make up something about McClurg. Let’s say that half of every dumpster, and let’s say they take six dumpsters a week, is recyclable. Then, that means that there are three dumpsters worth of recycling. Any dumpster’s worth of recycling, from what I can tell, is going to cost roughly $500 in tipping fees. So that’s $1500 a week times 50 weeks a year. That’s $75,000 and that’s just to get McClurg.”
Tipping fees cover the cost it takes to pick up a dumpster, deliver it to a recycling facility, and bring a new dumpster back to campus. The tipping fee is often offset by the profit received from the recycling facilities upon delivery.
Aluminum is the most lucrative recycling material and it’s the first McIntyre is trying to get out of the landfill. She said, “[Aluminum] runs between $0.40 and $0.50 per pound…That’s a really great payback in terms of dollars for recycling. So, that is the most attractive thing to the University for recycling.” While the value of many recycled materials will not cover the tipping costs they incur, that isn’t the case for aluminum. In the past, the University netted between $50 and $60 per dumpster. “We’re not going to make any money off of this, but hopefully we won’t lose any money. I specifically set [aluminum recycling] up because I know that, in the financial place the University is at right now, asking to do something that is right for the environment can’t cost money,” said McIntyre.
Tipping fees aren’t the only expense that makes recycling difficult. Because custodians aren’t issued University vehicles, moving recycling from the bins to Kennerly (where they would be taken to recycling facilities) can’t be added to their already massive workload. For this reason, a new worker would have to be hired to move the recycling. McIntyre estimated the total price of picking up the recycling, “We’re going to do some real quick math. $15 an hour base pay 40 hours a week. So, $600 a week times 50 weeks of the year. That’s $30,000 base pay. Multiply that times 1.37 to give them benefits and that’s roughly $41,000 dollars. [For that price] you would have an individual who would be able to [pick up recycling]. I would hope that in 8 hours of the day they would be able to do more than just aluminum or just plastic…I would assume that that cost would get us a person that would be like the gentleman who does cardboard, but then you need the cost of the truck. If the truck doesn’t already exist then we have to buy a truck. That’s another $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000 plus insurance on top of that. Then we need the contracts and aluminum is the only one that really pays.” In the first year, picking up recycling from the bins could cost at least $80,000. McIntyre noted that this rough estimate wouldn’t include truck maintenance or gas.
McIntyre estimated the total cost of recycling paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass at $165,000. While one-time purchases, like a truck, make up some of this massive figure, most of it would be recurring charges like truck maintenance, gas, employee wages, and tipping fees. “What I run into a lot is the people who control the money saying no,” said McIntyre. While making sustainable change may have a financial cost, McIntyre stressed that there was also a cost to not making that change. “What we’re jeopardizing by not recycling is our future. It’s our reputation, it’s the faith and trust of our students, and it’s our collective global future. There is a fiscal cost to doing the right thing now, but you bet your boots there is a financial cost to not doing the right thing,” said McIntyre.
In the face of these challenges students are mobilizing to make change. SGA senator and environmental liaison Grace Olson (C’ 27) is working to have a group of students deliver the recycling in the stead of a new employee. “Our goal is for students to start taking initiative themselves because there is no one to do it in the University and I don’t think they’re willing to hire anyone,” said Olson. The plan is to have students pick up the recycling materials in University work trucks between 6 and 7 a.m.. Olson expressed her disappointment at the current state of recycling. “[Recycling] is a big sustainability motive; it’s one of the most basic things you can do, in my opinion. When you think of sustainability and things that you can be doing at home or at school in my head, I think of recycling. That’s one of the go-to things, and we don’t even do that.”
Olson came to Sewanee because of its sustainability program and sustainability efforts. “Once I got here I realized a lot of it was a hoax and a lie. A lot of it is super sugar-coated. There’s very little we actually do as a campus to become sustainable and a lot of students care about [sustainability],” she said. Olson felt that she lost some of her faith in Sewanee after she learned more about the school’s struggle with sustainability efforts. “[Tour guides] go into Snowden and they mention sustainability efforts during their tours and a lot of that isn’t true.” Olson expressed a desire to spread awareness of the truth and better the current state of recycling.
To conclude our interview, I asked McIntyre how students could help the recycling effort. She gave the following advice.
“Do everything [you] can with their cardboard to get it flattened and in the right place. If that means taking the box back from the SPO to some place with scissors and cardboard recycling that’s great. If you’re going to flatten at the SPO that’s great…There are places you can put your boxes in the SPO, but it is around the corner at the foot of the stairs. Cardboard we know is going some place, so please take the time. Glass can go some place. If you have glass and if you have the ability to find somebody with a car or drive, or if you like loud short walks, then you can take the glass to Kennerly. Do that.”
“The next piece is aluminum. Doing that would really be amazing. It doesn’t have the barrier of the inconvenience center (also known as the Convenience Center). The barrier is that you have to collect it yourself, you need to take it to the trip hopper (at Kennerly), and you need to take it out of the bag and put it in the trip hopper. Then, you’ll have to carry that trash bag to the nearest trash can; that might be a ways. You might have to carry that damp, sticky plastic bag, but I would ask you to please do that. Then, if you want to go even further than that then you need to turn to the inconvenience center. The inconvenience center is on Missouri Avenue. At the inconvenience center they’ll take steel cans in the metal bin and aluminum cans in the aluminum bins. They’ll take plastics, they’ll take cardboard, they’ll take old clothes, and they’ll take trash. I take all my stuff there and I’m there for four minutes. It doesn’t take long. What they don’t take is glass, so you need to go to Kennerly for glass.”
“If [recycling] is important to you, you need to let somebody know. The pressure I can bring is limited. They’re going to expect the pressure for things like recycling to come from somebody called the sustainability manager… You have more power than you think you have and less power than you want. Figuring out positive ways to use your power and voice is always what I recommend.”