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More bins to encourage campus recycling

By Daily Bruin Staff

Feb. 2, 1995 9:00 p.m.

More bins to encourage campus recycling

Administrators, groups advocate waste reduction

By Betty Song

The big red and gray recycling bins at campus eating areas and
the student union aren’t just there to sport pictures of aluminum
cans and newspapers. Despite the availability of these containers,
recyclable waste often fails to reach its proper destination and
ends up in the trash.

"I’ve seen students throw away their newspapers even if the
recycling bin is close to them," said E.J. Kirby, manager for
campus maintenance.

As a result, UCLA’s two separate recycling programs have
teamed-up to encourage the campus to recycle.

Facilities management which oversees recycling for state-funded
buildings, and ASUCLA Recycling for the student union, will soon
place specially designed bins for newspaper beside the orange
kiosks housing student publications.

"Instead of an open container, (the opening) will be thin and
only for paper," said Adam Sherman, public information officer for
the student union recycling program.

Most students say that the idea is good, but won’t solve the
problem.

"It won’t be an enormous help, but it won’t hurt," second-year
political science student Daniel Edber said. "(I see) most of the
papers are in the classrooms and on the floors, and a lot of people
just throw them away."

The customized bins are due out by the end of spring quarter,
but the aim is to have them by April 17 in time for national Earth
Week, Sherman said.

The Environmental Coalition, an environmental advocacy group
made up of UCLA students, staff and faculty, has also joined the
effort to increase recycling containers on campus. The organization
met with both facilities management and student union officials
last week to choose the bins.

"We’ve been meeting with them for a couple of months to expand
recycling (on campus), and to get more students involved," said
Dawn Weisz, director of the Environmental Coalition . The coalition
has researched alternative recycling companies to handle university
waste, Weisz added.

Perdomo and Sons has served the campus since 1991, but UCLA will
accept bids from other waste companies in the spring, Kirby said.
However, many large waste companies are involved in a "waste trade"
where recyclable materials are shipped to foreign countries with
less stringent environmental laws and workers are exposed to
hazardous conditions, Weisz said.

So far, the search for viable companies has been difficult,
Weisz added. "(UCLA) has to have a big company because it needs to
have someone to handle medical waste," she said, "We’ve called some
places, but they say that they sell (the material) to other
companies, and those companies will do what they will."

Currently, UCLA recycling has large blue waste bins for
recyclable materials at building loading docks, but they are
outnumbered by beige bins which contain non-recyclable waste, Kirby
explained. These containers holding campus waste until it is
picked-up by the waste company are locked to prevent tampering.

"Ideally we would have more beige than blue," he added.

Student union recycling officials plan to implement a program to
pick up recyclable material from residence halls once a month and
deposit it in the blue bins at the student union loading dock. They
hope to begin the program in March, said Kevin Castillo, supervisor
for UCLA’s students association recycling.

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