Rumors false: La Salle trying to Recycle

By Shannon Curley
Collegian Staff
October 10, 2007

Junior Brianne Dempsey, an English and communication major, finished off the bottle of Diet Coke she had been drinking. She didn’t throw it in the trash, though. Instead, she made sure to put it in the bag she and her roommates had set aside in the kitchen for recyclables. Before her 3:30 p.m. class, Dempsey brought the bag down the stairs of her building, through the La Salle Apartments courtyard, out the gate, and placed it in the green bin for recycling near the large gray trash bins.

There has been speculation by some on campus, including leaders from Students for Environmental Action, that all of Dempsey’s careful recycling may have been for naught. The service La Salle used to pick up the garbage has been rumored to distinguishing between trash and recycling.

An official from Physical Facilities flatly denies that this is the case.

“I can see where some students might get that idea, though,” said Mario Menocal, superintendent of grounds. “The truck they use to collect the recycling could be mistaken for a trash truck. It’s not blue or anything and they do put all of it in the back of the truck like a trash truck.”

Menocal did acknowledge that if a recycling bin is contaminated, it will be thrown away with the trash. This is happening with unfortunate regularity, according to Dominique Cataldi, president of Students for Environmental Action.

“Students contaminate the bins. They throw trash in them, and then it gets thrown away as a result,” said Cataldi, a senior philosophy and mathematics major.

According to Menocal, the trash and recycling are not collected by the same company, which prevents the recycling from being inappropriately collected with the trash. La Salle has a contract with Waste Management, which collects all of the trash from various sites around campus. However, the amount of recycling generated by La Salle housing, does not constitute what is called a “real load,” or enough weight to warrant using their large machines. Instead, Waste Management sub-contracts out the recycling aspect of the University’s garbage pick-up to a smaller company named Lawrenson.

While Waste Management collects the trash that the Physical Facilities ground crew has gathered everyday from all over campus from the three large trash compacters that La Salle owns, a truck from Lawrenson comes at least once a week to collect recycling from L.A., St. Teresa Court and the townhouses.

“This is a big improvement,” he says. “Initially, only two or three of these cans were getting full. Little by little, we’re getting better with recycling.”

According to Cataldi and David Sautter, the vice-president of Students for Environmental Action, La Salle still has a long way to go.

“La Salle’s at 6.6 percent recycling capacity. We’re trying to get to 25 percent,” said Cataldi.

Cataldi got these numbers from a study done by the Greater Philadelphia Recycling Council, which the administration hired to evaluate how environmentally friendly the University is.

“The survey included recommendations that included installing more recycling containers campus wide, and looking at ways to save costs by recycling and what products are available as made from recycled products that the University could purchase,” said Joe Birster, La Salle’s associate director of physical facilities.

“If we start recycling 25 percent, we would save $30,000 annually,” said Cataldi. “That’s not including initial costs. There’s a lot of initial investment.”

“But if we can get up to recycling 50 percent, we can save $70,000 a year,” said Sautter, a senior secondary education and english major.

According to Cataldi and Sautter, the University has been very willing to work with their organization. The two have met on several occasions with Birster to discuss changes and improvements that can be made. To date, the University has begun replacing light bulbs that burn out with compact fluorescent bulbs that cost slightly more, but conserve energy and last longer. There are also plans to build the addition to Holroyd from recycled materials.

Last year, Food Services started recycling all of its oil, which costs about five cents extra a pound. This is considerable as the Union alone produces about one thousand pounds of oil, according to Assistant Director of Food Services Robert Nyce.

“It’s significant, but it’s clean and it’s neat and safer. It’s a win, win, win,” said Nyce.

S.E.A. runs into opposition from the administration when what is environmentally sound is not considered economically feasible. Last year, the group’s efforts to switch to wind power were met with resistance.

“If [the University] doesn’t hear from the student body, they might not be as willing to put up initial investments,” said Cataldi.

curleys1@lasalle.edu