Students tend to recycle incorrectly, facility says

Staff at the NYU Recycling Shop have noticed an ongoing trend that they say needs to stop. Many students discard plastic containers without rinsing them out first, leaving them with residue from food and drinks.

"Almost every beverage container has some liquid left in it, whether it's just a little bit of residue or the bottle is almost full," Sarah Boll, NYU's recycling coordinator, said.

According to Boll, the Recycling Shop receives significantly more beverage containers than food containers, but the majority of food containers have some type of residue in them. While the sorting facility receives every type of recyclable container, some are too contaminated and thus cannot be recycled.

Instead, they are thrown into a landfill because they cannot be sold without the price being downgraded. The ability to sell the materials is important, Boll said, and even just one contaminated container can cause a truckload of containers to not get recycled because they could begin to smell and grow mildew.

According to the 2007 Environmental Assessment by the Sustainability Task Force, which is the most recent assessment, NYU recycled 31 percent of its 5,245 tons of waste. But 28 percent of the land-filled waste, some of which may have been contaminated, could have been recycled.

Some students admit to being relatively ignorant about recycling.

"Back home, I didn't really foster very good recycling habits, and it really hasn't transferred all that well out here," CAS freshman Eric Silver said.

Other students said they are more conscientious when it comes to recycling.

CAS junior Nicole Sussmane rinses out her containers.

She said: "It's what they told me to do in second grade."

Ying Lam is a staff writer.