Down the shoot: Where Vassar garbage goes

Sarah Brown Guest Writer

Imagine for a moment that it’s lunchtime at the Retreat. Throngs of students make their way to the cash register bearing ready-made sandwiches and bottles of iced tea. Some students sit at tables, catching up with friends while enjoying the best that Vassar dining has to offer, while many others have just enough time to throw back a vegan burrito before heading off to class or the library. As these students exit the Retreat with an empty bottle, plastic container and paper plate in tow, they are faced with a decision: to separate the different reusable materials and place them in their appropriate recycling bin, or to throw them out in the trash all in one move.

According to Associate Director of Building and Grounds Jeff Horst, the typical time-crunched Vassar student is much more prone to the select the latter course of action. “Most people on campus know about recycling, but don’t take the time or effort to use the bins and services provided,” said Horst.

At a progressive school such as ours, we pride ourselves on being informed about many important environmental issues. Ask almost any Vassar student how they feel about the gas mileage on Hummers or drilling for oil in Alaska and it is likely that he or she will express a strong opinion. Yet many students are either unaware or apathetic towards recycling efforts around campus. As Vassar sophomore Jessica Monmaney states, “It’s not that I don’t want to recycle—it’s just not something I think about on a day-to-day basis.”

The history of recycling at Vassar spans less than a decade. The program was initiated by student interest and grew larger when the town instigated a recycling requirement. It is currently run by Building and Grounds in conjunction with the Vassar Student Association organization Greens and the Sustainability Committee, a group of concerned students and faculty chaired by Vassar geology and environmental studies professor Jeff Walker.

Vassar has several programs aimed to help redirect more of the waste produced by our campus into recycling. Currently, only 30 to 40 percent of campus waste is recycled, however new programs aim to increase that percentage. For instance, Vassar now contracts with Greenway Environmental, which collects leftover food from the Terrace Apartments, Town Houses, South Commons and Ferry House and converts it into compost at the Vassar Farm. In exchange for the space to run their topsoil operation, Vassar receives this service from Greenway Environmental for free, and gets 100 yards of complementary topsoil.

Although there is no existing compost program at the Retreat, Vassar pays McEnroe Organics to pick up food waste at the All-Campus Dining Center. Horst says that eventually they would like to have Greenway Environmental process food waste at both the Retreat and ACDC.

In addition to the food compost services, all buildings on campus now have recycling containers that are collected regularly by Building and Grounds employee Rick Purdy. Students and faculty are encouraged to use these whenever possible. Horst acknowledges that without the will of students and faculty, our recycling percentage will remain stagnant: “We can put out as many containers as we want—but it’s up to the entire community to put recyclables in them.”