Issue date: 3/12/09 Section: Editorial/Opinion

UW-Eau Claire students love to recycle … right?

The biggest problem is that recycling can seem like such a hassle, especially when you're just trying to get food in your belly and get moving because you have a crazy busy schedule this semester. Or maybe it's because you're not completely sure what goes where, and what even counts as recyclable material?

But as a college student, you should feel that you're intelligent enough to make the right decision for the Earth's health and the future of the human race.

On our campus, there are beautiful blue bins almost everywhere you see a trash bin, so why not recycle? It conserves our resources so that instead of scraping the Earth dry of its natural beauty, we can use post-consumer recycled material to make our products. It can only help the human race as well, in our struggle to survive; hopefully those many generations ahead of us will appreciate our efforts to save the world for them, too.

If you're not a sappy earth-lover, this might motivate you a little bit more.

Right now, the students and staff of Eau Claire are involved in a fierce competition involving 500 universities all over the nation, and most people don't even know about it. It's called Recyclemania, and this is the fourth year Eau Claire has participated.

Recyclemania is a competition based on recycling and reducing overall waste. The awards given out at the end of the 10-week competition include most recyclables per capita, highest recycling rate (ratio of recyclables to trash), least waste production (recyclables and garbage) per capita, largest gross amount of recyclables, and largest amount per capita of targeted materials, such as paper, corrugated cardboard, bottles/cans, and food service organics.

In 2007, we placed fourth in the waste minimization category!

There is not much time left before the competition ends March 29. Right now, Eau Claire stands in the middle of the stats range among the other UW System schools, but it's still possible to make some headway! So recycle away!

Wait… do we really know how to recycle?

You'd be surprised at how much you might not know. For example, the city of Eau Claire doesn't recycle No. 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 plastics, so you should really just save the trash guy the hassle and throw them away yourself. Or better yet, avoid products that come in those containers all together!

No. 5 plastics are the most common and include yogurt cups, prescription bottles, aerosol caps, and drinking straws, as well as pop bottle caps, which is why you should de-cap your bottle before recycling it.

All containers should be rinsed of food particles before thrown into the recycling bin. Large items should be broken down to maximize space. If you live off campus make sure you separate your paper recycling from co-mingled recycling and it's best to put them in separate paper bags in the recycling bin. And most important of all, don't mix food waste, hazardous waste, or trash in with your recyclables.

If anything contaminates the recycled materials, they'll be thrown in the trash, and all of your positive efforts will have gone to waste - literally.

Also, you cannot recycle pizza boxes, photographs, carbon paper, blueprints, incandescent light bulbs, pyrex ovenware, or wax-coated materials.

Don't let this discourage you, though! You can recycle No. 1 and 2 plastics, post-it notes, magazines, and envelopes with a window, cereal boxes, junk mail, and telephone books. You can also recycle aseptic containers like drink boxes.

Another little known fact is that you can and should recycle compact fluorescent light bulbs. This is extremely important because they contain trace amounts of mercury.

In addition to the awesome recycling program at Eau Claire, we are extremely lucky to have composting available in the food centers of our university!

The large green compost containers in Davies and Hilltop have a specific list of what goes in and what stays out, and I encourage you to learn about and use this great earth-saving resource! According to our latest Recyclemania data, we generated 2,700 lbs. of compost during the third week of February.

Eau Claire students and faculty should already feel pretty good about themselves, considering we recycle about 20 percent of our waste on campus!

But I think we can do so much more! I urge you to get motivated to recycle, and follow through with your efforts every single time. If everyone gets on the bandwagon, we could do great things for the world!

Recycle lightbulbs at:
- Eau Claire Ace Hardware, 2618
Birch St.
- Pinehurst Hardware Hank, 3031 Hastings Way
- Thompson's True Value, 319 E.
Clairemont Ave.
- Best Buy, 4090 Commonwealth Ave.
- Parr's Hardware, 2618 Moholt Drive.
- Sam's Club, 4001 Gateway Drive.

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