At the Law School, a small group of students from the Environmental Law Society has initiated a project to increase recycling in heavily frequented areas where lack of accountability can diminish compliance.
"What's really sad," said Thomas McGuire, a third-year law student raised in Austria who is following up the project, "is to see an entire bin of potentially recyclable paper being trashed away because someone contaminated it by throwing a cup of coffee into it. People are usually willing to recycle but only if it's convenient for them."
But McGuire remains optimistic. "Once you get through the administrative hurdles and students get used to the bins," he said, "the impact is enormous. We calculated that more than 50,000 bottles and cans will be collected this year in the Law School alone."
New recycling centers have been placed in nine different areas in the Law School designed by the ELS and equipped with color-coded bins designed to promote proper recycling and discourage contamination. The bins have a narrow slot for paper, two round holes for cans and bottles and no lid for trash.
"The trick," McGuire said, " is to place recycling bins next to trash bins to make recycling as easy as possible. This new recycling system is inexpensive, and it does not increase the workload of custodians, as it actually reduces the need for many trash bins."
The project is only a few months old but results are already so promising that campus solid waste manager Walter Smithers said he intends to adapt the system to other areas. And in furtherance of its ecological goals, the Environmental Law Society hopes that those interested enough to read its recent report on the project will access the document electronically. Lawyers being lawyers, of course, it is eight pages long, single-spaced.
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