George Fox Recycling

By Rashad Smith

Back in 2003 and 2004, a student named Megan Weaver approached the George Fox University superintendent of grounds about recycling. She did research and was able to find areas to dispose the recycling along with infrastructure. An on-campus advocate also helped. For a while, campus recycling was booming. Over the years, interest has declined and unhealthy habits have impeded the operation.

The recycling process ended up having issues such as overload from dorms and the recycling getting full of trash. Plastic bags were especially unhelpful. Plastic bags plug up the recycling plant, and a large amount of them appeared in the recycling because of students lining their recycling bins.

 According to Superintendent of Grounds Jesse Dillow, what really stopped recycling was the international market. China is the #1 buyer of US recyclable material. The United States was not meeting the standards of cleanliness (% of impurities vs recyclables), so China stopped taking it. This resulted in recycling plants starting to not accept recycling, and transfer stations began charging three times more than the usual amount to accept recycling instead of the standard dumping price. 

Students on campus have been asking what happened to recycling. Although for a while students could only recycle corrugated cardboard on campus, the option of recycling paper, plastic, and cans has returned. Moving forward, the grounds team would like to bring back mixed recycling. This isn’t necessarily the best method, as plants would rather have more separate recycling, but it is a step in the right direction that isn’t too complicated for the mass campus population to follow. 

 There is an ongoing partnership with business students and bottle deposits which not only makes money but spreads awareness about recycling among the student life. With propositions such as these, correct recycling habits for the community can be more common and efficient. An example of this is Shirley Eckerdt, who collects bottles after sporting events on campus and donates the deposit to orphans in the Philippines. 

Plans are currently in motion to shift campus recycling responsibilities to Waste Management Northwest, with the possibility of bringing back indoor recycling bins all over campus. Nothing is concrete right now. A portion of on-campus recycling is still unavailable, but evidently there are still many ways to recycle. “We try really hard to be good stewards of creation. We think long and hard about how we’re doing things, and we’d love to get more student involvement,” Dillow said.