Student Government and college councils want to expand campus recycling by adding 30 bins, but Facility Services is requesting additional money to pay an employee to empty the bins before expansion can begin.
SG Vice President Jenny Byrd said paying an employee to empty the bins would cost $20,000 a year. The department has offered to pay half the amount if SG will find the additional $10,000.
Victoria Porter, solid waste and recycling manager for Facility Services, said her department does not have all the needed funds.
With the money, Porter said they want to create a full-time recycling position in Facility Services — someone to oversee the campus-wide recycling effort.
Until this position has proper funding, Porter said she has to pull people from their duties to help clean the Quad and other places where a lot of newspapers are thrown on the ground.
SG is searching for another department to pay the cost.
Byrd said the money will not come from the SG budget.
Because SG is in charge of the newspaper initiative, which provides the 855 copies of national newspapers to campus daily, Byrd said SG wants to provide recycling bins.
Porter said that when SG began the newspaper initiative, they had not planned the recycling aspect.
“There was no game plan for how the newspapers were going to be handled,” Porter said.
Porter said the newspapers “create a real mess.” She said her employees have to fish out newspapers stuck in air grates and constantly clean the Quad.
In response to the newspaper-recycling dilemma, SG encourages students to use the bins and keep their campus clean.
“We don’t want to make campus a trashier place,” Byrd said.
Rebecca Florek, co-director of SG’s Campus Affairs, which oversees the recycling effort, said she thinks the extra bins will urge students to recycle more.
Florek said according to a SG survey that is still being tabulated, many students want to see a bin next to every trash can and vending machine.
“The more bins out there, the more people realize and recycle,” Florek said.
But Porter said students do not seem to care about recycling and littering.
Porter said she believes the first step should be student awareness. She said they could put out many bins, but if students do not use them, the effort is pointless.
“Everyone seems to lay the newspapers where they are done reading them,” Porter said.