SJSU promotes recycling despite challenges

By: Mark Aspillera

Posted: 11/15/07

Today is SJSU Recycles Day, an occasion sponsored and introduced by the Environmental Resource Center and environmental club this year.

The SJSU facilities management Web site says that the campus has a waste diversion of 56 percent. The site says that recycling services on campus are in accordance with AB75, a 1999 state law that requires state agencies and "large state facilities" to divert 50 percent of their solid waste from landfill.

Campus policy cannot follow students home and off campus, however. Each city maintains its own recycling system dictating what can and cannot be recycled according to the SJSU-based Center for the Development of Recycling, who have a list of recycling policies for cities in Santa Clara county.

Some of the items that San Jose accepts for recycling are glass, cans and cartons, paper and cardboard, Polystyrene, clothing and metals like aluminum foil and empty aerosol cans, according to the city Web site. Materials like batteries and automotive fluids, which contain hazardous materials, must be recycled at drop-off points in the city.

One student was not sure about the recycling system where she lived but said she received recycling bins anyway.

"They just dropped off these big bins one day," said Mandy Wintle, a child development graduate student. She said she has recycled at home ever since.

Poom Lowsitisukdi, a senior chemistry major and Japantown resident, said recycling in San Jose is easy.

On Oct. 31, the San Jose City Council made a decision to have 75 percent "waste diversion," changing the destination of waste originally bound for landfill, by 2013.

San Jose currently maintains a waste-diversion rate of 62 percent according to City Hall.

Lowsitisukdi said he does not have to separate his recyclables into smaller constituencies such as glass bottles, plastics and paper. He said he and his roommates need to use only a single bin for all their recyclables.

Recycling on campus is more difficult, he said.

"The only time I recycle on campus is in Duncan Hall," he said, referring to the bins for paper recycling present in campus buildings.

Douglas Bowler, a senior business management information systems major, also said it is more difficult to recycle on campus than it is to recycle at home.

"I think a lot of students are just too preoccupied," he said, adding that he did not think many students make the extra effort to track down the right bin for the particular material they have in hand.

He said bins for recyclables other than plastic and glass bottling should be placed outside.

Bowler said he most often "hands off" any drink containers or cans he might have on hand to one of the people who come on campus to collect recyclable cans and containers.

One incentive to recycling may be the California Refund Value, which is the amount of money paid by a recycling center to a person for each beverage container he or she brings in. Recyclers receive 5 cents per container given.

A 2004 study by the California Department of Conservation said 5.8 billion bottles and cans were recycled in California in that year. The same study estimated 19 billion CRV bottles and cans would be sold in the state by the end of the year.

Wintle said she has turned in cans for CRV in the past but not on a regular basis.

Lowsitisukdi said he and his roommates have been considering finding a recycling center to redeem the CRV because of the amount of containers they dispose on a regular basis.

"We usually have a lot of bottles and cans that we need to get rid of," he said.

One student takes a more hands-on approach to recycling materials.

Jay Gluckman, an engineering graduate student, said that in addition to recycling at home, he works with Resource Area for Teaching, a Sunnyvale nonprofit organization that collects office supplies and old computers from offices and distributes them to K-12 schools.

Gluckman said the organization only collects equipment that would otherwise be placed in dumpsters.

"We have a contractual agreement with the offices," he said. "We only take the things they don't want."

He added that computers are one of the biggest catches in this form of recycling.

"Occasionally an office will decommission an entire fleet of old computers, and we'll get those," he said.

Recycling systems vary from city to city, and not every city will drop off a bin in front of your house. Whether looking for the right bin on campus or collecting surplus supplies from offices by night, "closing the loop," as the saying goes, still requires a bit of initiative from the recycler.