Ideas For Recycling

I have a proposition for BU. I will tell you how to both cut costs in waste disposal and get some great publicity to boot. Oh, and you’ll satisfy students’ desires to recycle. In fact, I propose that you can go from your image as a stodgy, profiteering and socially unresponsive institution to one of an innovative social and environmental leader (here is the part you want to hear) and save money at the same time. You can do this because you have a resource both Tufts and Harvard lack: a local recyclables collector who will take away as much of certain recyclables as you can dish out and will do it for free.

Living in Allston for two years has educated me as to the efficacy of bottle deposit and plastic recyclable programs. They have generated an underground workforce that searches long and hard daily for those materials that can be exchanged for small amounts of money. They do this on a house-to-house, dumpster-to-dumpster basis, which is both arduous, dirty and time consuming. They could be your recyclable removal department. All you have to do is make it available to them, and you will cut Capital Paper’s bill and your waste disposal bill. The process must rely on both student and administrative action, but it would profit both. If the polls done by ESO are representative of the population at BU, if you give the students a way, they have the will.

First, South Campus requires the smallest action. South requires only the students involvement but could be expedited by some small measures by administration. Students along 800 Beacon St. who dispose of waste behind the buildings: Simply don’t put your cans, glass or plastic bottles in the trash. Most of the time they are searched for these items anyway. Simply put them out separately, and they will be gone by the next day. Do this consistently and you will be a reliable supplier, and your recyclables will be gone. If BU were to put out a bin for this purpose, or even designate a volunteer on a weekly basis to do it, the process of both collecting and outputting items would be more efficient. Since the products in question are not fire hazards as far as I know, you could store these bins in buildings.

Along the Commonwealth main drag, make every third or so garbage can a recyclable can for the same purpose. Put signs on all the trashcans advising students there is a recycling container ahead for their soda can, cafÈ latte bottle and Jolt plastic bottle. To not tarnish BU’s picturesque campus with disconcerting rogues (people who pick trash for a living), lock the recyclable bins. Then put the contents out en masse in a location where prospective students and their parents won’t see them, maybe near a dumpster in the back, and don’t worry about it anymore. This will cut the amount of trash needed to be taken away, since these items take up space without weight, as they are filled with air. Thus Capital Paper and Waste Disposal Inc. need make fewer trips. It may be possible to eliminate collection spots altogether.

The dorm and college logistics are a bit more problematic, but nonetheless doable. Bins from floors must be moved daily and emptied, but into dumpsters allocated to recyclables. I guarantee you will never need empty that dumpster, and your overall load will decrease. I would suspect that a similar arrangement could be reached with a single person from each floor, perhaps for extra guess passes per semester.

Symbiotic relationships abound in nature. Oxygen is plant exhaust and CO2 is human exhaust. We live off of their disposal. BU could imitate this principle for its benefit. All it takes is a little effort and ingenuity. As a bonus, we get to make those kids across the river look unoriginal. Are you salivating yet, Silber?