My roommate and I generate about two full bins of recycling and garbage per week – and that’s just in our personal living space. Imagine all the food waste, paper, bottles and packaging we as a student body of around 2,500 produce each week. Just six people are responsible for the collection, sorting, and disposal of all our refuse: the employees of the Middlebury College Recycling Center.
On Friday afternoon, I bore witness to the mountain of bagged recycling and garbage that was the result of just one day’s pickup. Before the bags arrive at the Recycling Center, they are picked up from over fifty sites by Wes Doner, main driver of the recycling truck, and Paul Gurney, main driver of the CDL (commercial driver’s license) trucks.
Doner described his typical morning.
“I come in, check my truck over, make sure the lights and everything are working and then I go around picking up all the recycling and come back to unload,” he said. “If I have any more time, then I’ll get off the truck and help these guys sort through the garbage and recycling.”
The CDL trucks run separate routes in order to fulfill their specific tasks. There is a trash route, a recycling route, a compost route and a daily bio-ash pick-up at the Service Building.
The College actually utilizes all of the compost it produces for landscaping around campus, including athletic fields and flowerbeds.
“Every three days, the compost is weighed at transfer stations and then taken to the stump dump up on South Street,” Gurney said. “Once a year, it’s screened out and made into our final product.” Once the bags of recycling and garbage arrive at the recycling center, they must be sorted. This might seem like a relatively straightforward process, as students have theoretically pre-sorted their garbage and recycling into the appropriate bins.
But Recycling Center employees Kimberly Bickham and Cleveland “Billy” Pottinger showed me this is rarely the case.
Pottinger called me over to where he was sorting and showed me the contents of one of the bags from a recycling bin. It was full of plates coated in some sort of nasty cheese sauce, plastic bags and tin foil mixed with a few actually recyclable cans and bottles.
“This one looks to me like it might be from the tailgate area,” Bickham said. “And that’s actually a lot nicer than some of the ones we’ve seen.”
The general consensus among the employees was that students could make their jobs exponentially easier by simply taking the time to sort their garbage from their recycling.
“Not dumping coffee or liquids into the recycling bins, breaking boxes down to help with space and not throwing light bulbs and batteries into the trash” were the most common offenses, according to Bickham. She also agreed that general sorting would be the biggest help.
“Everyone has a trash and a recycling bin in their room,” she said. “If they could simply sort in their rooms and then take those bins out to the appropriate large bins, that would help tremendously.” It might seem like common sense, but it’s easier said than done.
During the homecoming football game, the Middlebury Athletic department hosted the Green Panther Challenge. Green Liasons from varsity teams stood in front of recycling bins in the stadium and the tailgating area. They were supposed to monitor people sorting to improve the likelihood that trash would be put in the correct bin.
Bickham said, “The results were only a tiny bit better when sorting was monitored. Folks still aren’t sorting it out exactly the right way. I’m in hopes that with hockey and basketball being inside, the monitoring will go much better.”
After the garbage and recycling has been sorted, everything except returnable cans and bottles, enters the single-stream compacter. Once a month, paper is stacked and shipped to Rutland to be recycled.
Out of the four employees I spoke with, Pottinger has been with the Recycling Center the longest – although he said he wasn’t sure how long it had been exactly.
“I never check the time,” he said. “Time waits for no man, so I say let it run.”
The recycling center recycles more than just cans, bottles and paper – it also collects and re-sells used appliances, furniture, school supplies and clothing. These items are stored in attached trailers, which students have access to during normal recycling center hours. Usually, the reuse trailers get at least one visitor per day.
“Near Halloween, we were really busy with people coming through,” Pottinger said. “We’ll actually be closing the clothing part by the end of this month and bringing what’s left over to H.O.P.E. [a local poverty alleviation organization in Middlebury].”
On the whole, the College’s recycling practices are highly efficient. The diversion rate, or the amount of recyclables that are kept out of the landfill, is 64.5%, a rate that Pottinger described as “excellent.” But we could easily raise that rate if we can keep things like nacho cheese out of the blue bins.
Our recycling center is certainly doing its job – so maybe it’s time for us to give them a little more help. So, next time you’re in a hurry and tempted to chuck your half-chugged cup of coffee into the nearest receptacle, think about where that cup is going and whose hardworking hands it will have to pass through before it reaches its final resting place.
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