Students will now be responsible for buying bins, gathering and dropping off recycling

The Department of Residence Life cut its recycling program this year, handing the job over to students in each residence hall to run instead of Residence Life employees.

Now, students must buy the recycling bins in their dorms, gather recyclables and truck them to drop off points.

Recycling may stop in dorms where there are no students willing to haul off materials.

Residence Life Recycling has shifted its focus to concentrate more on education about the importance of recycling than organizing collections, said Debbie Hanson, Program Coordinator for Residence Life.

Jim Van Arsdale, Director of Residence Life, said a proposed expansion of the recycling program, not budget cuts, were behind the change.

"What I understand is that there was a desire to do more (recycling), and that is what we couldn't afford," he said.

He would not comment further on why the recycling program had ended.

Hanson said budget cuts caused the end of the recycling program. The budget cuts prevented Residence Life from allocating additional funds to meet the demand, she said.

Hanson said more funds are needed to run the recycling program. One major obstacle she faced was a shortage of employees, which meant she ran the recycling program herself with two student coordinators.

"There was not enough staff to do timely collections," she said.

Consistent on-time collections are crucial in recycling in order to avoid running into health-safety issues, she said.

In addition to this, the Department of Residence Life recycling needed more money for additional bins and pick-up services, increasing the budgetary strain.

When evaluating if they could continue a recycling program at a budget of $13,000, Residence Life administrators also looked at the demand the future dorms will place on the program, said Joel Hauff, associate director for administrative services in Residence Life.

The former recycling program staff often found they were in over their heads because of the growing amount of recyclables on campus.

Residence Life unites with Campus Recycling at the beginning of every semester to round up all the cardboard that students would normally throw out after they move into the dorms.

The Department of Residence Life and Campus Recycling recycled 17 tons of cardboard and 2,100 pounds of aluminum in 2001.

Residence Life earned money for recycling aluminum cans, which it gave back to the residence halls.

While Residence Life did not have similar data available, Campus Recycling figures show that Campus Recycling collected 1.68 tons of aluminum cans and earned $705.60 during the 2001 to 2002 school year.

Residence Life ended recycling collections in the halls and removed all the bins over the summer.

"They took away the bins. If we had the bins, it'd be really easy. We'd fill them up and then put them in the truck," said Emily Brand, an aerospace engineering sophomore and resident at Yavapai Residence Hall.

She served on the Yavapai recycling committee last year.

The bins were taken away because nobody would have been collecting the recyclables at the start of school and taking them to neighborhood drop-off points in a timely manner, Hanson said.

Residence Life Recycling and Campus Recycling said they are willing to help students set up a new recycling program, although it isn't yet clear how.

Residence Life will "provide information on how to set up programs, where to purchase bins and how to run collections," Hanson said.

"We're not saying that we're not going to make any effort. Perhaps the larger question is what students want to do with recycling," said Arsdale.

Campus Recycling has offered to serve as a drop-off point for dorms.

"They can take their materials over to the yard here, and we will put them into our waste stream," said Alana Levine, program coordinator of recycling and waste management.

Some students still want a recycling program in the dorms, even though it means that the halls must put forth a larger effort.

"All in all, the feel of the halls is that (recycling) is an important subject and worth having a program," said Tim Yuhas, Gila resident and history sophomore.