Once the trash leaves the Ohio State students’ hands, they will rarely think about it again. Whether they sort it into the correct bin or dump everything into one, where is our waste ending up? Recycling is a bit of a controversial sustainable practice, so let’s deep dive into whether OSU’s recycling is worth the extra few seconds it takes to separate our trash.
According to the Green Buckeyes Office of Student Life, our trash is collected by “a trash hauling company” that looks through to make sure there is minimal recycling contamination. If there is too much contamination, they simply throw the lot into the trash. Once it leaves the building, Recycling and Refuse Services collect the trash and it gets sent to the Franklin County landfill. The recycling is said to be taken to the Rumpke Material Recovery Facility (MRF) right here in Columbus. Once at the MRF, they are first-hand sorted to help reduce remaining contamination, and then “the materials are fed through machinery to help sort the materials.” This means plastic, glass, paper, and metals are separated and then go through the respective recycling processes for each. They are sold to manufacturers as raw materials to be made into different products.
After learning about the process, it seems relatively reliable and effective. I want to raise a few points, however. First, the university does not mention how many of the recycling loads end up in the trash because of too much contamination. Although they claim to focus on educating students when the contamination becomes too high, I have personally never heard of that actually happening. They also say that OSU has a goal to have a 90% diversion rate of material diverting from the landfill by 2025. However, they make no mention of how close they are to that number currently, making me wonder if that goal is feasible.
With those concerns being voiced, the Rumpke Material Recovery Facility seems to be a good company to be taking our recycling. For starters, they do in fact sort through the material and decide what can be recycled and what cannot be. They also have legitimate relationships with manufacturers to whom they send their separated goods and seem to have one for each type of recycled product. With that being said, 6000 tons of material are being taken by the landfill each day, whereas 800 tons are being taken by the recycling facility. To make it worse, 60 percent of what is sent to the landfill is recyclable (WYSO). This is of course no fault of the recycling facility but is an alarming number all the same. If the MRF went to the landfill to sort through and find what is recyclable, they would lose significant money, and since they are still a business, they cannot do that.
With all this information, I think that OSU is doing everything it can to try and have a zero-waste, recycling-friendly campus. They are paired with reputable facilities that put in valiant efforts to recycle and reuse everything possible. Although there could be more education and outreach with students, at the end of the day we as students need to be more accountable. As college-aged individuals, we should be able to take the extra time to separate our waste and know what is recycled and what is not. Overall, I think it is absolutely worth it to take the extra time to do so and take the steps to reach the 2025 goal.