JMU participates in ‘Recyclemania’
By Victoria Shelor, staff writer
Posted on February 1, 2007

Recycle one ton of last semester’s class notes, and you could be saving JMU around $65, while the cost of dumping sets the university back about $52.

With the kickoff of Recyclemania last Sunday, the EARTH Club and the JMU Recycling Program are asking the community to recycle used beverage containers, paper and cardboard. The nationwide competition will compare figures week-to-week from now until April 7 to assess how much the school actually recycles compared to other colleges and universities. Students can keep track of how the student body is doing by checking the Web site at recyclemaniacs.org.

“The competition was founded in 2001, but this is the first year JMU is participating,” said junior Lara Mack, an Earth Club member.

JMU is participating in the Per Capita Classic competition, with the objective to collect the most recyclables per capita. 

“The most important goal for us is not to win this competition — although it would certainly be great if we did — but rather to increase awareness about recycling,” Mack said.

The EARTH Club promotes recycling education with literature, as well as doing recycling cleanup at local sites.

“We give away recycling stickers to get the word out,” Green said. “We also work closely with Anthony Mancuso to figure out ways to spread the word and make recycling more effective.”

Mancuso, the operations manager of the Recycling Program, meets with the EARTH Club to inform it about the recycling program and to discuss ways to help out. He created a MySpace.com page for JMU recycling to educate the campus.

The Recycling Program started in 1996 as a result of an EARTH Club initiative, beginning with a staff of only two — a recycling coordinator and one student — along with several volunteers from the club. The program has since grown to a staff of more than 15 people.

“There was a brief time when the program got started that the recycling staff couldn’t keep up with the amount coming in,” said Jason Rexrode, operations supervisor of the program. Rexrode has worked with the program since 1998 and seen the number of staff and volunteers increase, but said he would like to see even more of an effort from students.

“It’s hard to get students to pay attention to it. I guess it’s a lot to ask,” Rexrode said.

He said many people falsely think Styrofoam — like the red Coca-Cola cups used in dining halls — is recyclable. In a large dumpster at the recycling center on South Main Street, the recycling staff and other volunteers weed out the Styrofoam cups and milk cartons from the bins and move them to the trash.

“The contamination is something students could work on,” Rexrode said, “It slows things down when things are in the wrong bins.”

The Recycling Program tried to approach Aramark, the university’s dining company, several times about changing the use of Styrofoam cups, but the company hasn’t budged.

“Re-using is just as important as recycling,” Green said. “We have a really great recycling program funded by the school that should be utilized more.”

The Recycling Program’s staff separates everything JMU discards to its proper place — trash to the landfill and incinerator and recyclables to reprocessors. The material is gathered and organized at the recycling center and then shipped to a processing plant.

“Volunteers” from the county jail sort material into different grades of recyclable material to be sent to the plant.

“There are seven grades of UBC, but we only do ones and twos,” Rexrode said. Each UBC is marked with a number one through seven.

Old corrugated containers save JMU $70 for every ton recycled. According to the program’s Web site, JMU recycled 59,435 pounds of loose cardboard. This translates to 510 trees, 210,000 gallons of water, 123,000-kilowatt hours of energy and 90 cubic yards of landfill space saved.

Keeping resources out of the waste stream saves energy and natural resources by decreasing the demand on resources and lessening pollution, thus protecting the environment.

“We would like to eventually start composting in the future,” Rexrode said. “Keeping food waste out of the trash would create nice mulch.”