Aug. 5, 2009

When students move into the residence halls later this month, they'll find something new in their rooms – bright blue recycling bins. CSU Monterey Bay used money provided by a grant from the California Department of Conservation to buy 3,100 bins. The grants are intended to promote recycling and are financed with unclaimed refunds on beverage containers. None of the money comes from the state's general fund.

Student assistants from Conference and Event Services (including Julio Arambula, pictured at left) and Campus Planning and Development sorted, labeled and delivered 900 of the bins to the residence halls. Each room got one; the six-person suites in the North Quad buildings received two. Some of the bins may find their way to apartments in East Campus, according to campus planner Anya Spear.

The goal is to get young people, living on their own, to pay attention to where they throw their trash. Each bin comes with a guide that explains what kinds of materials to recycle – bottles, cans, plastic, cardboard and paper – and a reminder to carry the full bins to the new 6-yard blue recycling dumpsters that will be installed next to each 4-yard green waste dumpster already located near the residence halls. ''We have, in the United States, been establishing a recycling infrastructure for three decades, but when we look at rates, we are not improving,'' Kate M. Krebs, executive director of the non-profit National Recycling Coalition, told The New York Times. National data shows that recycling overall is flat, but it is especially poor among college-age people, even though they grew up with recycling as a widespread practice. ''When you look at demographics, the 18- to 24-year-old sector makes little effort to recycle,'' Krebs said.

Last May, Spear, campus facilities director Bob Brown, their staff and representatives from Waste Management, the university's garbage collector, conducted a "trash audit" of dumpsters located near all 11 residence halls. At the company's Castroville facility, they sorted through a sample of 1.26 of the 5 tons of garbage. They found that nearly 16 percent of the material (by weight) was recyclable. Plastic, aluminum, tin, paper, cardboard and glass had been tossed in the dumpsters instead of being recycled. "We're hoping that by putting bins in the rooms, we'll have a better percentage" of discarded items being recycled, Spear (pictured at left) said. "They know recycling is the 'right' thing to do; we're trying to make it the 'easy' thing to do." Another waste audit will be conducted in the next year, to see if there has been an improvement.

As part of the effort to cut down on what goes into the waste stream, the university's custodial contract was recently updated to include emptying of employees' desk-side recycling bins. The new custodial provider, GCA Services Group, has extensive experience in green cleaning techniques and is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. CSUMB is exploring green cleaning improvements in addition to its current practice of using cleaning products certified by Green Seal, an independent, non-profit organization. Due to the state budget crisis, the recycling grant has been frozen. When the money is available, the university hopes to use some of it for a recycling coordinator position that would be shared with UC Santa Cruz. CSUMB, along with 21 other communities and dozens of nonprofit and private-sector organizations, is a member of the Monterey Bay Area Recycling Partnership, led by Ecology Action.