Mason Makes Recycling Easy

By Broadside Correspondent Kerri Buschbacher

Going green does not have to mean getting complicated. Walk around campus and one will surely find recycling bins just waiting to hold empty soda cans and plastic bottles.

A challenging feat becomes one’s outdoor walk from class to dorm without spotting a colorfully painted recycling container or clearly labeled receptacle. Locating a bin for recycling paper on this same journey from classroom to dormitory is equally as difficult.

Travel through the Johnson Center, sit in the computer lab or enter the common area of any of the on-campus housing, and there will be bins established for white and mixed-paper recycling.

Leave the comfort of these buildings, however, and discover that outside, unneeded papers and finished magazines have less of an immediate eco-friendly home.

“When I have a lot of scratch paper that I would like to recycle, I have to go to the JC or the library to recycle it. It sometimes discourages me from recycling due to the inconvenience,” said Christina Wong, a freshman government major.

Accessibility of commingled recycling bins, containers used for recycling aluminum, tin, glass, steel and plastics one and two, seems to greatly outweigh the availability of paper and cardboard recycling throughout the Fairfax campus. Is this a fact gone unnoticed, or a conscious and planned decision?

According to Ashlea Smith, the co-chair of the Recycling Working Group at Mason, the lack of outdoor paper recycling receptacles has a purpose.

“Steel cans and aluminum cans are supposed to hold liquids, and they can tolerate being around water,” said Smith. “So, let’s say if it rains outside, they won’t particularly get much heavier. But paper and cardboard are wonderful absorbents, so if it rains outside, and the bin gets full of water, the bin is going to be impossible to tip.”

Aside from paper recycling being more susceptible to damage from inevitable outside conditions, paper-recycling bins are frequently stationed indoors for another reason, convenience.

“For outside areas, I have found, over the years, that paper recycling bins would not be utilized as much as inside buildings, so no paper recycling bins were placed outside,” said Ron Lim, Recycling and Waste Manager.

This is not to suggest that Mason will never see an increased amount of paper recycling bins outside.

“In the future, we are looking to put recycling stations, which would include paper and cardboard, around campus to include some outside,” said Lim.

Although opportunities to recycle cardboard and paper products may not be as easily seen, the options do exist, however lesser known. Recycling cardboard, although not specified on bins throughout campus, is an easy process.

To recycle these items, “take your cardboard, flatten it, and stick it between two recycling bins, or it could be next to a recycling bin if it is against a wall . . . those who go around and collect the recycling understand that that means it is cardboard to be recycled, and not trash,” said Smith.

Recycling is one of the simplest ways to create a more sustainable future. All it takes is a little bit of effort, awareness and concern. To recycle paper products, head indoors to locate your nearest receptacles, at least for the time being. As for cardboard, empty and flatten and place next to the most convenient recycling bin.

Encourage those around you to make the difference. As Smith said, “I think it’s just opening your eyes up to everything that’s around you . . . once you start paying attention to one little thing, you see it everywhere. So if we gave people that spark they don’t initiate themselves to care and to recycle, than it’s just going to cause this type of behavior to increase, this recycling behavior.”

For more information on recycling at Mason, visit http://facilities.gmu.edu/physicalplant/recycling/accept.htm.