Facilities Management, with the help of student environmental
groups, is reworking what some call a flawed system of campus recycling
used to sort the 9,700 tons of waste the university produces annually.
Kevin Brown, assistant director of landscape services, said the new
system should help manage recycling, making it easier for students,
faculty and staff to discard waste properly. It also could save the
university money because for each ton of mixed paper waste collected
they receive $50, he said.
Last year, the university recycled 17 percent of its waste, a 2
percent decrease from four years ago. This decrease comes despite the
Maryland Recycling Act of 1998, which requires all state institutions
to recycle at least 20 percent of all waste, according to the annual
All State Agencies Recycle survey conducted by the Maryland Department
of the Environment.
“In the past few years the university hasn’t made recycling a
priority,” said Kate Imp, Maryland Public Interest Research Group
president. “The University of Maryland doesn’t want to just have a good
reputation for academics and sports, they want to have a good
reputation for their environmental efforts. Everyone has been realizing
that we’ve put that on the back burner.”
To improve campus recycling, Facilities Management and MaryPIRG
volunteers are removing every recycling bin in all academic and
administrative buildings and replacing them with the new standardized
system. Instead of having separate bins for different types of paper,
maintenance will now collect any paper product in one bin for mixed
paper and another bin to collect metal, glass and plastic.
Before these new changes the university had no standardized
recycling system. Each building had a different type of bin, making it
confusing for people to recycle their waste correctly.
