Recycling Services does the best they can

Times are hard in our country financially and there doesn’t seem to be any sector of society that hasn’t felt the pinch as of late. As much as it pretends to be a school, WMU really is a business, just like all of the other businesses around Kalamazoo.

Western is comprised of various departments from building maintenance up to white collar upper level management. Each department is funded by the university and most of them would probably tell you that they don’t get nearly enough.

One such department is recycling. Recycling Services, run by Carolyn Noack, is one department that is frequently ridiculed due to ever present overflowing dumpsters and contaminated bins.

The proof is in the observation. If you were to walk across campus you’d notice many of the smaller containers either filled with garbage, or overflowing onto the ground, or a combination of both. If you live in the dorms or on-campus apartments, you’ve probably seen the large recycling dumpsters spilling into the parking lot.

Noack said the department works primarily with the help of student employees. Individual recycling bins in the buildings are emptied into a central location by the individual departments and then picked up by the student staff, who are also responsible for emptying the small recycling containers found outside around campus.

If you’re wondering why these containers are often overflowing and neglected for seemingly weeks it’s because Recycling Services doesn’t have the funding to hire as many employees as it truly needs.

The large recycling dumpsters are contracted out to a local recycling contractor. Some paper dumpsters are emptied weekly on either Tuesday or Friday, and others are emptied only when needed. The plastic and metal dumpsters are only emptied once a week, on Wednesdays and most of them are done on an “as needed” basis.

So, what this means is that when you see the recycling spilling into the parking lot, chances are that it’s a known problem, but it won’t be taken care of until next week.

Aside from the actual collection, or lack thereof, the other main problem facing the department is the contamination of the bins.

“Contamination is basically anything in a bin that should not be. If it’s only a couple of things it’s no big deal, if it’s a whole bunch of stuff then it all gets thrown away in the garbage,” said Noack.

Contamination can range from the obvious things such as non-recyclable garbage, to something as simple as plastic in a paper bin or vice versa.

Thousands of pounds of recyclable material are thrown away each year due to contamination, which is largely the fault of students and staff. In fact, one source said that the containers at the College of Health and Human Services and the College of Engineering need to be thrown away into the garbage nearly every time; so if you are a student or work at either of those colleges, shape up.

Noack said one of the most frequent areas of contamination comes from plastic bottles being put into paper recycling bins in the classrooms.

Luckily the department has just received funding to put plastic recycling bins in the classrooms so that problem should largely disappear in the near future.

One downside to the addition of recycling containers for plastic in the classrooms is the lack of additional employees to empty them out. Recycling Services is simply underfunded and the hiring of additional help seems unlikely.

“I don’t think any department on campus is funded as much as people would like it to be,” said John Goes, director of the Physical Plant, which houses vital departments from maintenance to landscaping, recycling, custodial, etc.

“Each department is funded to the level of service it can provide, everyone would like more funding. Funding decisions are made elsewhere, but recycling does what it can with what it’s given.”

Goes also commended Noack for the job she does, calling her a very dedicated employee.

Many departments have taken huge budget cuts over the years, so perhaps we should just be grateful that we still have certain services, in whatever capacity we have them.

“The city, the county, have all changed their recycling, it’s good that we’ve been able to keep our program,” Goes said.

So while Recycling Services might get a lot of flak for what appears to be a terrible, mismanaged department, they really appear to be doing everything they can.

By the sounds of it we could all use a little slack in a world where there just isn’t enough money to do a proper job.

Andrew Mell, a Western Herald opinion columnist, is a senior majoring in aviation, and can be reached via e-mail at melltimejr@hotmail.com.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=3493

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 28 2009. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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