Coupled with the University’s flagship agenda, the University has more than doubled its recycling efforts during the last five years.The University recycled 346 tons more paper, cardboard, aluminum cans and plastic bottles in 2008 than 2007 said Andres Harris, University solid waste recycling manager.Recycling of those solid waste materials has grown from 316 tons in 2005 to 931 tons so far this calendar year, Harris said.”It’s a change of [student] minds, along with bumping into more recycling bins in front of them so they know they have the option,” Harris said.Harris said the University added 985 indoor recycling bins this year, bringing the total number of indoor bins to 3,622 from 2,637 last year.Harris said he couldn’t determine the exact cost of recycling against the costs of disposing all the University refuse because much more material is thrown away.”If you have the opportunity to recycle for the same price, that’s a no-brainer to me,” Tammy Cheatham, vice president of the Recycling Foundation of Baton Rouge. “The University is a major consumer, and recycling is a component of being sustainable.”Student workers collect the materials from outdoor recycling containers and deposit them into one of 80 recycling dumpsters located on campus.Items deposited into indoor bins are collected by Facility Services workers separately from material which will be taken to a landfill and deposited the recycling dumpsters.Harris said he received complaints the recycling from indoor bins were not being properly disposed of as student workers distributed additional bins during the summer.”I assured them that these are very isolated cases, and every time that happens, we fix the problem right away,” Harris said. “We just need to know when it is not being handled properly so we can fix it.”The recyclable material is collected once the dumpsters are filled and taken to the Recycling Foundation of Baton Rouge.The material is then dumped and run through a series of screens, conveyor belts and hand-sorting systems to separate the different commodities, Cheatham said.The separated material is then bailed and goes to the different markets which reuse the materials for different purposes, Cheatham said.The University had more than 6,426 tons of regular refuse in 2008 compared to 963 tons of recycled material. Harris said only about 10 percent of the University’s waste is recyclable by traditional means while more waste is organic so it could eventually be recycled by a composting system.The University also has processes for recycling other expended resources. Harris said some used cooking oil is collected from University kitchens, made into biodiesel by the University Agricultural Center and eventually used to power the diesel engines used by Facility Services.”The tools are pretty much everywhere, but we have a long way to keep going of course,” Harris said.—-Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]