Author: Cordelia Kenney
Stamped on the back of every student ID card, Occidental’s mission statement proclaims the college’s commitment to cultivating young leaders who will ultimately influence society beyond the quaint hills and hallways of Occidental.
However, while students study to ace tests about environmental policies and other important global issues, Occidental itself fails to make the grade regarding its own environmental practices.
On its 2011 College Sustainability Report card, Occidental was specifically marked down for its minimal recycling practices, a contributor to the college’s B-minus grade. While other small liberal arts colleges continue to raise the bar for what it means to be green, Occidental has hardly entered the race, held back in part by an antiquated recycling system.
Many students are confused about Occidental’s recycling practices and what actually happens to the cans, bottles and plastics tossed into the college’s poorly labeled recycling bins. Students are pushed to maintain high ethical standards at an institution which fails to do the same. A lack of information about recycling policies may be a large contributor to Occidental’s failure to match its mission.
Urban & Environmental Policy (UEP) major Charlotte Krovoza (sophomore) observes that students generally fall into three categories: “There are those who don’t care at all, there’s the majority who like recycling but are lazy about it and there’s a small minority of students who will recycle even if they have to bring it back to their dorms.”
The apathy on campus towards recycling stems from a lack of information and confusion about how the college recycles disposed items.
“There’s an extreme lack of awareness about it,” Roxanne Butler (sophomore) said. “It’s really vague to people what the actual process of recycling means.”
Both Krovoza and Butler have taken UEP’s Environmental Problem Solving course, which is meant to push students to identify problems on campus and brainstorm solutions. Many students put forward initiatives to improve Occidental’s system for recycling, but according to Butler, this course should hardly be the only catalyst for improvement on campus.
“The whole class was really dedicated, but it’s pathetic that that’s the only way we can get [things] done,” Butler said. “Once the semester is over, it’s hard to stay as dedicated because we’re full-time students and have so much else going on.”
Closely associated with a general lack of awareness is the lack of promotion of recycling from the college itself.
“We think we’re doing our job by putting it in a bin. But if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind,” Alexander Acuna (sophomore) said. “Students don’t care because they don’t feel it affecting them.”
A flaw in the current system, many students argue, is Occidental’s failure to adequately inform students about what can actually be recycled and how much of what is taken away gets recycled.
UEP professor Mark Vallianatos explained that the current company that collects Occidental’s recycling, SoCal Recycling Industries, does not give the College any feedback, so it is difficult to know for sure.
“We have no good data on how much is recycled — the company does not give us any reports,” Vallianatos said.
SoCal Recycling Industries only picks up the plastics, glass and metals on campus, while Weyerhaeuser picks up the paper and cardboard. According to Associate Vice President of Facilities Management Michael Stephens, the paper and cardboard recycling program is generally successful, but the other aspects of recycling need improvement.
A full 60-70 percent of what gets recycled by SoCal is solely beverage containers. Food contamination prevents more significant amounts of what gets carted away from being recycled to complete the full process. If a batch of recycling is mixed with a used takeout container from the Marketplace, for example, the entire batch will be discarded, Vallianatos explained.
“SoCal is a for-profit company, so they only accept recyclables with CRV [California Refund Value]. Since they are for-profit, there’s no incentive to recycle non-CRV items,” Acuna said.
In an email, Lizette Mayorga of SoCal Recycling Industries stated that the company picked up a total of 4,689 pounds of plastic, 586 pounds of aluminum and 11,151 pounds of glass from Occidental from January to April.
By those figures, with 2,089 students and 230 faculty members, Occidental recycles about 0.41 pounds per person per week.
For comparison, California State University San Marcos recycles 80 percent of their overall waste.
Loyola Marymount (LMU) recycles around one pound of bottles and cans per person per week.
With over 8,000 students and more than 2,000 faculty and staff, that amounts to over 10,000 pounds of bottles and cans recycled in one week alone. Although LMU has four times the number of students as Occidental, its numbers nevertheless reflect a much more ardent support of recycling efforts on its campus.
While Occidental’s recycling information page is over 10 years old, the Claremont Colleges’ collective website contains information from 2008, in addition to a full report of a 2008 Environmental Audit.
Looking around bins on campus, there is a wide array of hard plastics that SoCal will not recycle at their facilities. CRV items only include plastics numbered one or two, which excludes takeout containers and Green Bean plastic cups, glass and aluminum. Once at SoCal facilities, anything contaminated with food gets tossed, as well as any hard plastics.
Students are confused about what can and cannot be recycled according to our current system. “Many students on campus as well as faculty and staff come from, or grew up in areas that had single-stream recycling programs,” Vallianatos said.
“They’re putting items in the bins that would normally be recycled, but we’re not single stream, so it ends up getting trashed,” Krovoza explained.
Students involved in sustainability efforts unanimously agree that the college must switch to a company that is single stream.
“We need to find a company that is a better fit with us and that recycles more kinds of materials,” Vallianatos said.
In addition, Occidental needs a company that regularly offers feedback on how well the College is doing.
“They’re not happy with us because they’re getting all these hard plastics and contaminated containers,” Krovoza said.
Butler said SoCal would not miss our business. “They wouldn’t care because they can’t recycle so much of our stuff,” she said.
In a recent meeting with the Los Angeles Department of Waste, representatives provided the students of Environmental Problem Solving with a list of other companies that would pick up recycling and practice single streaming.
According to Krovoza, the City of Los Angeles itself cannot pick up Occidental’s recycling given the college’s size but wants to help facilitate a transition to a more efficient company.
As the recycling program moves ahead, staff must increase their commitment to sustainability. “Occidental never stepped back to evaluate if we have more options,” Krovoza said. “There’s not really any staff committed to it, as far as I can see.”
Faculty could also play a more critical role. “The faculty is here long-term, while we are here for only four years,” Krovoza said. “They’re older and more experienced. We need to get them more invested.”
“Students are the ones filling the gaps,” he added. “It’s facilities’ job to do it, and they’re willing to do it, but students need to push for it.”
Acuna insists that ResEd could also lend a hand, considering that dorms are among the primary originating spots of waste.
“They need to reprioritize,” he said, after explaining that ResEd refused to fund the students’ efforts to create posters in the dorms describing what to recycle.
“[Sustainability] should be better incorporated into orientation. We should c
reate a stronger link between residential education and sustainability groups on campus,” Vallianatos said in agreement.
As Vallianatos, Butler, Acuna and Krovoza all pointed out, more efficient recycling practices are not the end goal. “It has to be reduction first,” Vallianatos said.
For example, after recently introducing steel water bottles and raising the price of plastic water bottles at campus dining facilities, the Marketplace saw a 30-40 percent reduction in sales, according to Vallianatos.
A major source of frustration among the students most passionate about recycling is the abundance of non-recyclable takeout containers. Although sturdier containers could replace the ones the College has currently, Butler says the most sustainable takeout container is no takeout container at all.
The non-recyclable containers are only one example of how the college’s current practices make it convenient to be wasteful. “We have to increase the cost for bad behavior,” Vallianatos said. “It should be easy to do the right thing.”
Krovoza added that for every trash bin there should be a recycling one next to it, so students are not tempted to toss garbage in with the recycling.
While a need for education initiatives clearly exists, establishing a more refined system in place of the current one is paramount. “We have to get the system right and then focus on the education,” Krovoza said. And although facilities’ and faculty’s cooperation is fundamental to making this crossover, students must also make a concerted effort. “It’s a two-way street between facilities and students,” Krovoza said. “It’s absolutely possible, but it needs to be advocated for [by the students].”
Stephens agrees with this sentiment. “The college is prepared to purchase and install well-labeled recycle and waste bins … but the expenditure would be of little value without informed and consistent participation from the campus community. That is why UEP and students must be leaders in this effort; it is primarily about human behavior, our willingness as a community to participate in the program.”
Occidental’s ultimate goal, however, should not revolve around efficiently recycling or even just reduction.
“We should be pushing the envelope and research ways to reuse,” Vallianatos said. “It’s not just reducing the waste by some amount but changing the paradigm.”
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