The Environmental Protection Agency only gives one college or university in the entire nation a Partner of the Year award, and this year they’ve honored Eastern because of its recycling and waste reduction efforts.

The WasteWise Partner of the Year award recognizes overall waste reduction achievements, efforts to purchase or manufacture recycled-content products and activities to promote WasteWise.

Every year, the EPA’s WasteWise recognizes 10 Partners of the Year. Among the organizations recognized this year alongside Eastern are Verizon Communications and NEC Electronics America, Inc. Other institutions involved with the voluntary recycling program include hospitals, colleges and universities, and state, local and tribunal governments.

In 2005, with the voluntary efforts of more than 13,500 students, faculty and staff, Eastern diverted nearly 50 percent of its waste through recycling efforts, boosting its waste reduction and recycling cost savings to $140,000.

“Reduction of waste is what is weighed the heaviest for the (WasteWise) award,” said Allen Rathe, who works for Eastern’s grounds operation facilities planning and management.

“I feel the faculty, staff and students have done a great job in reduce, reuse and recycle,” Rathe said.

To further amplify Eastern’s recycling efforts, the university used a little creativity and donated 615 tons of boiler ash to road supervisors in 2005 to provide better traction on snow- and ice-covered roads, according to a WasteWise news release.

Eastern has been recycling since 1992 and became a WasteWise a member in 1997. Since then, Eastern has successfully implemented an effective waste reduction program. Eastern is just one of 143 colleges and universities involved with the WasteWise program.

The program, which is free and voluntary, provides guidance and recognition to nearly 1,900 participating organizations that are working to find practical methods to reduce municipal solid waste and improve financial performance, according to the new release.

According to the collection totals of the fiscal year 2006, the main block of recyclables comes from cardboard, newspaper, scrap metal, filestock, mixed metal and plastic, dead trees and firewood, plus other miscellaneous items.

Last year, Eastern managed to divert 777,757 pounds of trash to recyclables. That leaves Eastern with a little over 1,900,000 pounds of trash.

If Eastern didn’t recycle, the school would be stuck with almost 2,700,000 pounds of waste every single year.

To compare to the 2001 fall enrollment, Eastern collected only 12,129 pounds of recyclables from all the waste produced, only a small dent in what Eastern recycles only five years later.

Past winners of the WasteWise award are the University of Oregon, Miami University and Youngstown State University in Ohio. Eastern can now proudly add itself to that list.

Randy Smith, the recycling coordinator at Western Illinois University, said Western is not a member of the WasteWise program. While the university recycles approximately 10 percent less waste than Eastern, Smith said that their housing department is working on educating more students about recycling.

“(The school) went from burning trash to compacting trash,” Smith said.

Smith also said this year, Recyclemania, which is a recycling contest set up by the WasteWise program, is coming to the campus. Through the program, colleges and universities compete over a 10-week period to produce the largest amount of recyclables and the least amount of trash per capita.

Western is the only school in Illinois that is participating in Recyclemania this year.

“Starting (the WasteWise program) is easy. The hard part is with recycling, you should start at the back first,” Rathe said.

“The first thing you should do is have a place to take the recyclables. Then you can find the containers and start educating your personnel, including how to collect the recyclables,” Rathe said.

Even with the honor of a WasteWise award, Rathe said there is always room for improvement “until every piece of paper, every aluminum can, every bottle and anything else is reduced, reused and recycled,” he said.

The records show that students’ recent recycling efforts have paid off, and WasteWise noticed.

Eric Hiltner/Daily Eastern News Julian Reliford, a senior corporate comunications major, unloads cardboard into a recycle bin at CCAR Industries Monday afternoon.

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