It’s Sunday morning. The remnants of your weekend remain scattered around your townhouse – empty cans and bottles litter your kitchen counter and tables. Instead of throwing them all away in a disguising black trash bag, why not get paid to by ridding of them in an ecological way?
Fairfield is making great strides in its efforts to improve sustainability on campus, most notably with its recent installation of recycling machines at the townhouse laundry rooms this past week. Manufactured by Tomra, an automated recycling machine distributor headquartered in Norway, the new machines only use the same amount of energy as a 40-watt light bulb, making them highly useful while maintaining their eco-friendliness.
“We’re the first college campus in the country, according to Tomra, to use these types of machines [the UNO line],” said Joseph Bouchard, the director of Environmental Health & Safety and the campus fire marshall.
Smaller than a vending machine, the wireless recycling machines will give verbal instructions to users on how to properly dispose of their recyclables. Best of all, users will receive StagBucks as a reward for recycling; every can or bottle recycled in the machines will earn the depositor a few cents back. After depositing all of the recyclables, the user will receive a receipt that they can then bring to the StagCard Office in the Kelley Center in exchange for StagBucks on their StagCard.
As could be expected from any college campus, many of the recyclables that students have are not leftover only from soda or water. Fortunately, “Students will not be punished for recycling alcoholic beverages, said Dana August ’11, the president of the Student Environmental Association (SEA) and an integral part of the committee that installed the new machines. “We want you to recycle anything you can!”
The machines were installed in the two townhouse laundry rooms, located in the two block and the thirteen block. Although the machines are a part of the townhouses, it does not mean they are only for use by the townhouse residents; any Fairfield student may use them.
Bouchard joined forces with Dave Frassinelli, the assistant vice president and director of facilities management, and other individuals, including the Student Environmental Association, to create a group interested in changing the non-green methods of the University.
“We formed a sustainability committee,” Bouchard explained. “We got hold of the TOMRA company representatives, and there was student input [in the process] from the beginning.”
Once the company agreed to install the machines at Fairfield, only one hurdle remained: funding.
In this tough economic time, any new program is likely to face challenges with funding and maintenance, but the Tomra recycling machine project was a special challenge. With each individual machine costing the University between $8,000-$10,000, the installation of the machines was a significant investment.
“We disbanded the curbside pickup at the townhouses and we used that funding for Tomra,” Bouchard said, which covered the majority of the cost of the machines.
Because of this change, the dumpster areas throughout the townhouses are altered as well. August explained, “We made recycling centers at each of the dumpster locations, and we’re going to standardize the toter to a blue toter” in order to minimize confusion for recycling.
“We’ve been recycling with students since the 90s and trying to find the magic solution is almost impossible,” Bouchard said. “Now it’s the monetary incentive that we’re using here. We’ve tried just about everything else, and it hasn’t worked. It’s very challenging.”
Hopefully, University students will embrace the new machines and their opportunity to get StagBucks in exchange for recycling. The other alternative, throwing away recyclable materials in the trash, was evidenced in a large way this past week as well.
A Trash Audit, co-sponsored by SEA and the Green Campus Initiative, was held in front of Alumni Hall. Nine students went through dumpsters and sorted the trash from the recyclables. The last time the event was held in May, three dumpsters were condensed into one.
This year, said August, “We went through four dumpsters and combined the trash into one, [so] we recycled 3/4 of what we found, [though] more could have been recycled if it wasn’t contaminated with food or other trash!”
With the new Tomra recycling machines and the opportunity to get paid to recycle, Fairfield has high hopes for its transition to becoming a greener campus. “The first step to people living “greener lives” is to be aware of what they use, said August. “People have so much “stuff” in their lives, but as we just proved (in the Trash Audit), at least 3/4 of it can be recycled instead of thrown out as waste.”
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