The student government’s University Development and Recycling committee intends to gear up for another day dedicated to rescuing recyclable items from three dumpsters across campus, tentatively scheduled for May 1.

During their first dumpster dive event at the end of October, six volunteers took a look at Eastern’s trash accumulating at Thomas Dining, Pemberton Hall and the Physical Sciences Building under the direction of Ryan Siegel, the campus energy and sustainability coordinator.

Siegel said each location was deemed important in representing a cross-section of the busiest areas on campus frequented by the most people during a typical weekday.

For the better part of the afternoon, curious students and committee members donned rubber gloves and sifted through an array of food waste intermingled with salvageable resources like paper and steel cans.

These items topped the list of the five most common articles uncovered in the dumpsters, including food as the second most common and plastics as the first.

The team collected and sorted 183.1 pounds of debris total, 59 percent of which was ultimately composed of recyclable materials and sent off to be processed at local centers.

Of these recyclable materials, 25 percent represented what Siegel called “normal” recyclable materials, including aluminum, paper and plastic.

“Unfortunately, this is likely typical,” Siegel said of the data collected at the dumpster dive. “If we were able to recover all the ‘normal’ materials, this could cut the university trash bill by $20,000.”

Jason Sandidge, chair of the UDR committee, said he looks forward to having another go at Eastern’s garbage and hopes to coordinate his committee’s event with the residential halls’ recycling efforts.

Sandidge said he plans to organize a contest that would encourage the residence halls to recycle while competing against each other for a pizza party.

He said he also hopes to see representatives of each hall participate in the dumpster dive to earn extra points toward their hall’s total weigh-in, as well as share the good feelings of giving back to the campus.

“I felt great (after the dumpster dive),” Sandidge said. “I could’ve gone for hours and hours, but after awhile spent digging through so much trash, your nostrils start burning.”

Even so, Sandidge said he is ecstatic about the upcoming event and described it as one of the happiest moments he has spent at school.

“Even though it wasn’t a huge, huge amount, I still feel like we made a huge

difference,” Sandidge said. “I’m really proud of my committee, I felt we set a good precedent for next year. It was a glorious day for me, the UDR and student government in general.”

Erica Whelan can be reached at elwhelan@eiu