For the second consecutive year, Boston University has participated in RecycleMania, a nationwide tournament that determines which institution of higher learning is the best at recycling by measuring such categories as cumulative recycling rate and gross tonnage of recyclables.
But as the competition, which began Jan. 27, nears its March 27 closing date, BU is not faring very well against its competition.
According to RecycleMania’s website, out of the 266 schools participating BU ranks 246 in cumulative recycling rate, which measures a school’s achievement in both recycling and reduction in potential waste, at 10.98 percent as of Tuesday.
By comparison, the nation’s leader in this category, which is used to determine the tournament’s “grand champion,” is California State University-San Marcos at 71.30 percent. At the state level, BU ranks 16 out of the 17 Massachusetts schools participating in that category. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay is the leader with a rate of 53.70 percent.
As the sixth-largest private college or university in the nation, with an enrollment of nearly 32,000, BU would theoretically recycle a large amount of items, even if that resulted in a small percentage of all waste. But the school ranks seventh in the Bay State in gross tonnage of recyclables with 225,087 cumulative pounds of recyclables. Westfield State College, a public school nearly one-sixth the size of BU, has recycled 482,089 pounds.
BU has recently revamped its green efforts with a new Sustainability office in Facilities Management.
Sustainability@BU’s website lists eco-friendly tips, tricks and challenges for students to help reduce the school’s carbon footprint while acknowledging the current statistics working against those green goals.
The website lists sustainability advances the school has made as part of its efforts. In 2006, the recycling rate of the Charles River Campus was three percent &- in the 2008-09 academic year, the rate was 15 percent. In November 2009, BU began setting up the infrastructure needed to support a campus-wide recycling system aimed to be completed in this semester.
Despite these efforts, some students expressed concern about a lack of communication by the university to students about ways they can recycle &- on Bay State Road, for example, the university has four recycling receptacles, but residents on the street said they weren’t aware of the options.
“There’s only one recycling bin on all of Bay State,” said BU sophomore Katy Carlebach, who lives in a Bay State brownstone. “I literally didn’t know it was there until a few weeks ago.”
When told there are in fact four recycling receptacles, Carlebach said they were pointless if not made known to residents.
“Well if there are four, they aren’t very clearly marked,” she said. “If I was a person who didn’t care about recycling, I wouldn’t go looking around for where the bins are. I’d just throw it all out with the trash like everything else.”
Sustainability@BU lists the four bins, located in the less-trafficked alleys behind the brownstones, as part of the Green Campus Tour on its website.
Carlebach added that Bay State Road, which stretches for about half a mile behind Commonwealth Avenue, houses too many students for so few total bins.
“I’m sure if there’s only four on the whole street anyways, then the lazy people who would rather walk a few steps to their trash can than to the bin a block away already just throw out all their stuff anyways,” she said.
Every outdoor trash can at RecycleMania leader Cal State-San Marcos is paired with either a recycling cart or container. But at BU, students said locations of receptacles cause them to see recycling as something they have to go out of their way to do, especially in larger buildings like Agganis Arena.
“Whenever I’m walking around Agganis, I always pass about four or five trash cans before I get to a recycling bin,” said BU junior Adam Kasper. “Think about the stuff they sell at Agganis. Plastic cups. Cardboard trays. All that stuff is recyclable, but if I’m only walking past trash cans, guess where my first inclination to throw my stuff is.”
Look for further coverage in The Daily Free Press tomorrow.
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