U Recycle Home | What to Recycle? | FAQs | History | Media
U Recycle History
The Initiative
U Recycle began as an initiative through Ozone House in 2004. Olivier Bouchard was in charge
of creating a program for on campus recycling. The program outlined a three step process for
starting recycling on campus:
1. Having various houses and dorms recycle independently and
drop off materials in a centralized location (a shed behind Rathskellar).
2. Creating the
infrastructure for recycling to be picked up on a regular basis with managers in each location.
3. A complete facilities takeover of our recycling program.
With each stage Ozone wanted to handle advertisement for the program and on campus education
for recycling. Recycling had been instituted at Union in the past, but due to problems with
contamination the program was abandoned in the 1990's.
The History
U Recycle's first major action was getting West College recycling. The initial proposal did
not include freshman dorms in the first stages because contamination was so widespread in
underclassmen dorms. Stephen Po-Chedley began recycling in West College storing containers in
a closet donated by Residential Life. Allison Phelan soon followed suit with a similar program
in Richmond. The two took in hundreds of pounds of paper, aluminum, plastic, glass, and cardboard
a term, outpacing any other residential space, with little to no contamination.
Similar efforts were repeated in Minervas, theme houses, and other dorms. Stage 1 included the drop off
of material to "the shed" with the materials being transported to the Schenectady County Recycling
Center on a weekly basis. Professor Maleki and the physics department acted as advisors and helped
to move the recyclables in the geology department van.
Stage two began in the weeks prior to the 2005-2006 school year. Ozone House began to formulate
methods of advertising recycling, making recycling more efficient for volunteers, and creating a
budget for the third stage of the process.
A new process was created in the middle of the first academic term in 2005. Volunteers no longer would
have to carry recyclable material to a central shed, instead volunteers could drop off materials in
a residential life approved closet. Each week a couple members of the U-Recycle management would then
be responsible for emptying the closets and transferring the refuse to the local recycling center. John
Levene was able to work with facilities and the recycling center to set up the ambitious campus-wide pick up.
The process was streamlined as much as possible in an attempt to make recycling easy for each building.
U Recycle set an ambitious timeline - attempting to get recycling up in all residences by the end of
2005. They met this goal in all dormitories, sparing Fox Hall, which lacked volunteers.
Meanwhile, Katie Matho and Ozone worked to reach out to incoming Freshman and set up an atmosphere
in which recycling would be natural. Matho, Bouchard, and Po-Chedley spoke to incoming Freshmen en-mass
in the opening week, unveiling the new recycling plan and club. Over 30 people joined the club U Recycle
at the outset of the new program.
While the new program was being tried and tested Olivier Bouchard, John Levene, and Stephen Po-Chedley
worked with facilities to come up with a budget in which the school could hire staffing to support
recycling. The budget was presented to the planning and priorities committee on November 7, 2005.
The budget was not approved and U Recycle carried on adding volunteers to every dormitory, all sororities, and some independent and theme houses. The group recycled over 1.5 tons of material per term and were running above the total possible capacity (they scraped it together). The coordinators volunteered near five hours a week (up to 12 hours) and individual dorm coordinators put in as many as two hours per week. U Recycle again petitioned for a budget in November of 2006.
In the spring of 2007 U Recycle learned that the program would be supported with a facilities staff person managing the day to day activities of the program, while U Recycle worked on outreach and education.
U Recycle
August 20, 2007