Harvard Trashes The Rest

Harvard running back Clifton G. Dawson Jr. ’07 isn’t the only one setting records around campus. October saw the University recycle more cans and bottles than in any previous month, and Harvard earned top honors for its paper-recycling efforts in a competition among more than 90 colleges and universities nationwide.

Last month, Harvard recovered a record 38.64 tons of bottles and cans, the University’s supervisor of waste management, Robert M. Gogan, said yesterday.

The Environmental Protection Agency last month also ranked Harvard as the top paper recycler in the agency’s Recyclemania competition, which includes 93 schools in 33 states, according to Recyclemania’s Web site.

Harvard recycled 36.41 pounds of paper per person in the competition, which lasted 10 weeks at the beginning of the calendar year. Harvard saved nearly 25 percent more paper than the second-place finisher, Emory, which recycled 29.33 pounds per person.

Gogan yesterday attributed Harvard’s high ranking to the University’s “good paper recycling infrastructure.”

The record figures on bottles and cans, he added, come in part from increased awareness of Harvard’s recycling policies. The University’s numbers in that area had previously been “lagging a bit,” he said.

“Maybe people didn’t know that you can mix certain things like aluminum and glass,” he said. “Working with the reps in the undergraduate houses, we have increased the per capita collection.”

Jeremy P. Tchou ’08, a representative for Kirkland House’s Resource Efficiency Program (REP)—part of the Harvard’s Green Campus Initiative—noted that the University has also cut its trash production in recent months.

“Even though we recycled more plastic than ever before, Harvard has discarded 222 tons less trash—a drop of 13 [percent]—than in the same period last year,” Tchou wrote in an e-mail.

Harvard recently decided to expand its list of recyclable plastics to include Solo cups, clamshell Styrofoam containers, and plastic food containers—all of which would have previously been considered trash, house REP representatives said this weekend.

Harvard’s REP representatives have worked to spread the news about the recycling-policy changes and about the importance of recycling in general.

Representatives said they have tried to increase awareness of the new specifications by putting up posters, using the REP bulletin boards in each house, and sending out e-mails to house lists.

“We’re doing our best to get every student practicing these easy behaviors,” Pforzheimer House REP representative Spring Greeney ’09 wrote in an e-mail.