2008 Woodie Awards
Reducing refuse
Increased recycling on CMU's campus saves money, energy
By: Phil Hornshaw
Issue date: 11/9/07 Section: News
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The tiny containers are there to make campus cleaner and save the university money.
They're recycling bins - 18 were added in October for recycling paper products on the first floors of Anspach, Pearce and Grawn halls to encourage students to recycle items like newspapers, said Steve Lawrence, associate vice president of Facilities Management. It brings the total number of paper recycling points on campus to 44.
"We're installing them in hopes of getting better recycling, instead of students just throwing papers on the floor," he said.
Newspapers in particular are a hassle for custodial personnel, Lawrence said, because so many students leave them in classrooms rather than disposing of them.
Lawrence said the university added 45 bottle and can recycling points this summer and during September. CMU now has a total of 54 bottle drop-off points on campus.
All those places to recycle mean less garbage for the university and less money spent on disposal, said Amy Shindorf, Isabella County Recycling Center resource recovery director.
Money is saved on dumping and on transportation, she said.
"In addition to the energy savings, we process the material here locally, about five miles from campus," Shindorf said. "We process it at the material recovery facility and send it to markets in Jenison and Detroit."
Lawrence said it was difficult to calculate what the university actually saved by recycling, but he said he suspected the recycling cost is lower because of the shorter distance to the center and because of the costs of building and maintaining a landfill.
The recycling center charges a $20 fee for dumping the materials and a $30 fee for transporting them. The nearest landfill is 31 miles away in Midland, Shindorf said.
The Midland Sanitary Landfill charges $5.50 per cubic yard of "household" waste - the category most of CMU's trash likely would fall into, according to Midland's Web site.
Lawrence said the university recycled an average of 38 tons per month between January and June this year.
Statistics collected by the recycling center detail CMU's recycling between Sept. 26, 2006 and Sept. 26, 2007. The university totaled about 450 tons of recycling material, Shindorf said, including 79.92 tons of newsprint and magazine material, or about 159,840 pounds.
"Recycling approximately 160,000 pounds of newspapers and magazines translates into the savings of 1,350.648 mature pulp-producing trees, 6,289.704 gallons of oil, 559,440 gallons of water and 3,276,720 kilowatts of energy," Shindorf said in an e-mail to Central Michigan Life.
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