The Daily Campus

Issue date: 12/4/07 Section: Commentary

How do you know things actually get recycled? You may have heard it all ends up in the trash anyway. This is absolutely false. Collection and processing is labor intensive and costly. These materials are collected because there is a market for them. No trash hauler is going to go through the trouble of collecting and sorting recyclables to throw them away. Though there are some isolated incidents of custodial staff mixing recyclables with trash, this is extremely uncommon and no excuse for dismissing recycling as useless. Custodial staff are trained to keep trash separate from recyclables and if they are found to be doing otherwise they will hear from their supervisors. Recycling takes a bit of effort, but is clearly the wiser choice both environmentally and economically. Next semester we will get a good idea of how we measure up to other university recycling programs as UConn will be participating in Recyclemania, a national college recycling competition, for the first time. Our recycling program is just getting started so we will surely be the underdog. However, Huskies are great competitors. With some hard work and a little fun there is no reason we can't bring yet another national title to Storrs.







- Dan Britton

Sustainability Coordinator

UConn Office of

Environmental Policy

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