ecoaspirations: How to make a recycling center

Recycling centers in dorms are an interesting way to grow community while teaching about recycling, add value to buildings, and become locations visitors love to see. From a community perspective, the centers are a place where people can work together and think about the environment.
One successful system can lead to another and when managed properly can continue for long periods of time. My school began with only one dorm recycling center in April of 2016 (the one featured in the photos). Because of the success of the first one, five more dorm recycling programs were added by October 2017 of similar design.

With six easy steps you can quickly design and begin operating your recycling center!

Step 1: Talk to dorm parents or school administration who are interested in sustainability about creating a center. University students can try talking to resident assistants and other students to create a core group.
Step 2: Work with dorm parents, school administrators, and the fire marshal to find a location to have the center. Good locations have lots of space around them, are easy to get to, and follow building code. An example of a bad location would be on a staircase landing.

Track your recycling on campus to see how it is managed. Before creating the center, make sure that the recycling is being taken out and how it is stored on campus.

When choosing a location for your center, take into account how far the large recycling storage is from your building. It is also important to determine how the recycling is kept in the big bin in order to ensure that the recycling from your center matches in how it is collected with the large school wide bin.
Is it in bags or open in a dumpster? Is this single stream or separated? How you organize your dorm setup should match the storage unit/s for ease of compatibility.

This is an example of a large recycling bin which my school uses:

Collection bin for the first floor:

Step 3: Attract people who want to help out. Starting out we only had a few people, all part of the environmental group. Each of us had to take out the recycling for the whole building on their day. Now we have enough people to man each floor everyday separately. Create a schedule and buy bins for both the center and ones to put around the dorm. Depending on the size of the dorm and the number of people, it may not even be necessary to even have collection bins. Having people bring their recycling directly to the center may work too.

Step 4: Determine how to empty the trash from the collection bins into the recycling center. I recommend bringing the collection bin bag to the recycling center and then sorting it into the larger bins.

An alternative is to bring the bin from the center to the collection bins and transferring the bag contents into the center bin. It is easy at this time to look in the trash to find any recyclables which were misplaced.
Sometimes the bags get full of liquid and have to be replaced. Make sure to have garbage bags available in case some are broken. Oftentimes bottles are not empty. This is a good step to empty bottles.

Step 5: Educate! Hold dorm meetings and show what to recycle and where it goes. Create posters to remind people of what is recyclable.

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