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Recycling Bulletin

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Recycling Bulletin #31
news from a national leader in campus recycling

March 1, 2006

In this Bulletin:

CU Recycling Report: RecycleMania 2006, New Director at the Environmental Center, Campus Cell Phone Recycling, Baker Hall Waste Audit

Local Recycling Info:  Eco-Cycle Partners with CompUSA

Industry News: EPA quantifies energy benefits of recycling and source reduction

Frightening Fact:  Bottled Water Fad

Glimmer of Hope:

Get Involved / Upcoming Events: RecycleMania Volunteer Orientation and Office Clean Outs,  Tours of the Boulder County Recycling Facility, CU Campus Eco-Leaders

1. Recycling Report:  RecycleMania 2006, Campus Cell Phone Recycling, Baker Hall Waste Audit

RecycleMania 2006

CU Buffs are participating in RecycleMania 2006, a friendly 10-week competition between top recycling programs in the United States that runs through April 8th.  More than ninety colleges and universities are competing this year to see who can collect the largest amount of recyclables, the least amount of trash, and have the highest recycling rate.  CU has entered all seven competitions this year.

The recycling outreach team has been working hard to promote recycling and waste reduction to campus through posters, trash can prompts, email updates, tabling, and creative theatrics. In the third week of RecycleMania CU has moved into 15th place in the Grand Champion Diversion Rate competition.   CU’s averaged diversion rate is currently 29.42%.  To see our standings in other competitions please visit http://recycling.colorado.edu/rm06/pledge.php. 

CU Recycling wants 10% of the campus community - that's 3,000 people - to commit to practicing the Three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  Sign our online pledge at http://recycling.colorado.edu/rm06/pledge.php

The Environmental Center has a New Director

Dave Newport joined the CU-Boulder community as director of the Environmental Center last month. He previously served as director of the University of Florida's Office of sustainability where he researched and published higher education's first sustainability report that met with global business standards.

In addition to his experience at UF, Newport served as a county commissioner in Alachua County from 1998 to 2002.  As commissioner, Newport championed renewable energy and energy conservation efforts.
Newport said he is excited to enhance the excellence of the Environmental Center to even higher levels of achievement and to showcase the center’s accomplishments globally to highlight CU as a world-class university with “significant positive impact on the planet and people.”  He also said that expanding the Center’s student support base is crucial.  “Clearly we have to broaden our impact into more diverse and minority populations,” he said.  “And that is an opportunity for leadership we shall not shrink from.”

Cell Phone Recycling on Campus

The University of Colorado Environmental Center's Recycling Program partnered with The Wireless Alliance to help establish the university's first permanent cell phone recycling program.

Campus recycling kiosks will serve as collection sites for students, faculty, and staff who want to dispose of old cell phones in an environmentally conscious manner and money raised in the recycling campaign will benefit various student organizations within the University of Colorado's Student Union, or student government, according to Jack DeBell of CU's Recycling Services.  The first cell phone recycling kiosk is located in the UMC adjacent to the T-Mobile cell phone vendor. The discarded phones will be sold to The Wireless Alliance and repurposed, reused or recycled.

For more information visit http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2006/75.html

Baker Hall Waste Audit

As part of their Introduction to Environmental Studies class in the Baker Residential Academic Program students sorted through one day's worth of dumpster trash and determined the amount of recyclables being thrown away in Baker Hall.

The results from the waste composition study showed one day’s worth of trash was almost half recyclable in Baker Hall.  That day 244 pounds of recyclables were thrown away from a total of 476 pounds of trash total.  Students were surprised to see the volumes of cans, bottles, cardboard boxes, and newspapers being thrown away.

As part of their class students will develop a hand out with the results of the waste audit and distribute it door to door in their hall. 

2. Local Recycling Info: Eco-Cycle Partners with CompUSA

Buy One, Recycle One at CompUSA

CompUSA store, 1740 30th St.

One of the goals of Eco-Cycle’s CHaRM (Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials) is to encourage manufacturers and retailers of materials to take responsibility for the recycling of their materials. Their latest partner in this venture is local electronics retailer CompUSA. Now you can Buy One and Recycle One on CompUSA – when you buy a new electronic item at CompUSA's Boulder location, they will accept your old product and cover the cost to recycle it with Eco-Cycle.  For more information contact EcoCycle 303-444-6643

3. Industry News: Recycling and Source Reduction Save Energy

One energy conservation success story that has gone largely unreported is recycling, but that's about to change. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a way to quantify the energy benefits of improved materials management and found that recycling and source reduction conserve large amounts of energy. Since the energy of waste management practices for specific products accrue throughout the life-cycle, EPA undertook a study to calculate the energy benefits of improved material management using data from an existing greenhouse gas (GHG) life-cycle analysis. During the 1990s the EPA began an ongoing analysis of the life-cycle GHG impacts of waste management activities. Using life-cycle data from the GHG emissions research effort, the study developed net energy factors for a selection of commodities analyzed for four waste management options: source reduction, recycling combustion and landfilling. Energy impacts were calculated in million BTU per ton of material, with Resource Recycling, Jan 06, p 23, by Henry Ferland.

For more information click here.

4. Frightening Fact:  Bottled Water Fad

• Members of the United Nations estimate that if the world took half of what it currently spends on bottled water ($100 billion annually) and invested it in water infrastructure and treatment, everyone in the world could have access to clean drinking water.
• But bottled water is cleaner, right? Actually, the U.S. EPA sets more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for bottled beverages, and roughly 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water.
• 1.5 billion barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce the plastic for water bottles, enough to fuel 100,000 cars.
• According to the Container Recycling Institute, only 14 percent of plastic water bottles are recycled.
• A water bottle in a landfill or lying around as litter will take over 1,000 years to biodegrade.

For more information visit: http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/Bottled020606.cfm

5. Glimmer of Hope

6. Get Involved: RecycleMania 2006: Volunteer Orientation and Office Clean Outs, Tour of Boulder County Recycling Center

RecycleMania 2006

Volunteers are integral to our RecycleMania campaign.  Come to our next volunteer orientation on Monday March 6th at 5:30 pm in UMC 355.  You’ll find out about all kinds of volunteer opportunities.  If you can’t make it, email maniacs@colorado.edu to find out how to get involved.
 
If you don’t have time to volunteer, maybe you can help by scheduling an office cleanout.  Now is the time to recycle those old files or books!  For guidelines, to schedule extra bins, or additional pick ups call 303-492-5321.

Guided tours of the Boulder County Recycling Center

 The Boulder County Resource Conservation Division will host guided tours of the Boulder County Recycling Center located at 1901 63rd St. in Boulder. Tours will take place the first Tuesday of every month.  The next tour will be held on March 7, 2006 at 4:00 pm and will last one hour.

The tour will cover topics such as ‘where does our trash go’; how to reduce, reuse and recycle; a 10-minute video of the recycling processing; how to recycle right; observation of the recycling facility operations and the importance of buying recycled products.  Large groups may want to call in advance to alert the tour guide but it is not necessary.  For more information call 720-564-2223.

Become an Eco-Leader

CU-Boulder is pleased to introduce a new campus sustainability program for faculty and staff.  The educational program integrates many of CU's campus sustainability initiatives, including transportation, recycling and energy.
With little time commitment, the program will also have large environmental and financial impacts.

The faculty and staff campus sustainability program will be coordinated by the CU Environmental Center and has two components: Department Eco-Leaders (Individuals) and the Green Office Certification (Departments).

Department Eco-Leaders will act as a point of contact for campus sustainability issues.  Eco-Leaders will serve on a voluntary basis during work hours to educate and inspire colleagues to take positive actions.  The time commitment for Eco-Leaders is minimal at 10 minutes a month after a half-hour orientation.  It is our hope that this program will build a community and culture of support for resource conservation on campus resulting in financial and environmental benefits.  Members of the Campus Environmental Council as well as the Campus Resource Conservation Committee support the program as it helps CU-Boulder to be a campus leader in environmental sustainability.

To learn more about the program or to sign up to serve as your department's Eco-Leader, contact Laurel.Kalish@colorado.edu or call 303-492-8308.

Subscribe to the CU Recycling Bulletin

The Recycling Bulletin is circulated via a closed list;  only CU Recycling has access to the rest of the subscriber list.  Subscribers' names and e-mail addresses are not available to any other group or used for any other purpose.

About University of Colorado at Boulder Recycling

The University of Colorado's recycling program is a non-profit, campus-based organization whose mission is to instill awareness of the benefits of waste reduction and recycling.  CU Recycling is widely regarded as one of the nation's leading campus programs. Awards have been given by such groups as the EPA, National Recycling Coalition, and the Office of Federal Environmental Executive, who in 2000, announced CU Recycling the model campus program in the United States.

The university community is encouraged to get involved in CU Recycling's many activities.  For more information, call (303)492-8307 or visit http://www.colorado.edu/recycle

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