Consumers are constantly making decisions: what to buy, when to buy it, how much of it to buy. They must also consider how to dispose of these items and are sometimes mistaken in the idea that once they are in the trash or on the ground, or even in the recycling bin, they are gone forever.
The city of Madison has felt the effects of this attitude in its struggle to get people to recycle in public. At the moment, there is no public recycling because in the past, containers were contaminated with large quantities of trash.
“We tried containers split in half. We tried containers with little circles at the top.
We tried putting different signs on,” Madison Recycling Coordinator George Dreckmann said, adding, “Right now we are kind of stuck.”
According to Daniel Einstein, University of Wisconsin Environmental Management Coordinator, the university recycles materials well beyond what is required by state law. Since 1995, the university has earned $1.1 million in revenue for the materials sent for recycling and has avoided paying $650,000 in landfill fees.
Recycling bins are scattered throughout campus for newspapers, bottles, cardboard and many more items.
While the city and the university’s recycling systems both rank in the top 5 percent in the country, David Wood, Grassroots Recycling Network Executive Director, feels there is always room for improvement.
Wood and Dreckmann would both like to see increased recycling at the various Madison fairs such as A Taste of Madison and the Madison Blues Festival.
The city of Madison recycles magazines and catalogs, newspapers, corrugated cardboard, brown paper bags, aluminum cans, steel cans including aerosols, glass bottles and jars and plastic bottles (marked “number one PETE”), which includes soda bottles and drinking containers. It also recycles milk jugs and laundry bottles.
Recycling, however, is just another form of waste management. Although the amount of recycling has increased over the past decade, the amount of waste in landfills has simultaneously increased, due to a proliferation of single-serve beverage containers and other wasteful containers, according to Wood.
“Not only are we depleting the earth’s resources, we are creating threats to human health,” Wood said.
Einstein feels students should examine their own consumer habits and ask themselves if they are doing all they can do to conserve.
“Are you buying things you don’t need to buy? Can you make copies double-sided? Can you share research material or use e-mail to distribute a message?”
For a guide to on-campus recycling, visit the campus ecology website at www.fpm.wisc.edu/campusecology.