Hartwick College Is Recycling Just About Everything

By JIM KEVLIN

The numbers tell the story.
Before adopting Casella Waste Systems’ zero-sort recycling on Feb. 1, Hartwick College sent out 1,600 pounds of recyclables a month.
Since, that number rose to 1,900 pounds a week.
“That’s the new average,” said Joe Mack, on-site facilities director for Aramark, the food service contracted by the college. “That’s a lot of water bottles and pizza boxes.”
Yes, pizza boxes. That’s one of the final recycling frontiers zero-sort recycling has reached.
Before Feb. 1, Hartwick students generated 800 empty pizza boxes a week that had to be disposed of as trash. Now, the boxes are recycled.
To back up a bit: Those of you old enough remember the days when recycling meant sorting bottles into containers for clear glass, brown glass and green glass, cans and paper.
“Zero sort means sort nothing,” Mack said.
Glass, cans, cardboard, paper all go into one half of the dumpsters.  Casella trucks haul the mixed batch to its recycling center, where a machine, with the help of magnets and the like, separates the stream into paper, glass, metal, aluminum and plastic.
Only food and clothing – the only items that cannot be recycled – go into the smaller half of the dumpsters.
The previous hauler would empty the dumpsters three times a week. The greater amount of recyclables requires Casella to pick up the dumpsters daily, (and the brand new dumpsters are Hartwick blue, yet.)
Hartwick is Casella’s first institutional participant in the zero-sort program, but at least two other large institutions are expected to come aboard within days.
The daily pickup costs more, but the college is saving money at the other end: You pay a flat fee to dispose of recyclables; non-recyclables are subject to a per-pound tipping fee.
Mack estimates the cost has been a wash.
Most satisfying, said the 15-year Aramark veteran, is the system encourages people to do what they should have been doing all along.
“Recycling is such a behavior modification,” said Mack. “I can command my people to recycle. But to get the whole college to recycle, that’s a challenge.”
“It makes it easier to do the right thing,” added Chris Lott, the Hartwick spokesman who was participating in the interview.