Cal State Northridge’s recycling program sprang to life in 1991, when Associated Students (AS) and campus leaders decided to divert recyclable materials from the university waste stream and to promote the benefits of recycling.
Spring forward to 2009. Under the direction of Cyndi Signett ’91 (Geography) and her assistant Rolando Valiente ’07 (Marketing), a staff of seven student workers now devote serious time—10 to 20 hours per week—to a campaign that educates the campus community on the importance of recycling paper, cardboard, glass, plastic bottles, ink cartridges and cell phones.
The results have been significant. During 2008 alone, the Associated Students Recycling Center processed 191,975 pounds of mixed office paper, 155,570 pounds of cardboard, 46,450 pounds of pallets, 7,000 pounds of combined cell phones and ink toner cartridges, and 340 pounds of combined tin and steel. Not to mention some 12,844 pounds of bottles and cans. That’s a lot of aluminum, plastic and glass.
Ever wonder, by the way, what happens to that bottle you toss into the bin marked “Bottles and Cans?” To get a sense of its life cycle in the era of sustainability, follow the staff of the AS Recycling Center in the processing of the bottle:
1. Romero Vasquez arrives at CSUN with hundreds of bottled beverages to be sold in various campus venues.
2. Anne Sherman, activities assistant in the Matador Involvement Center, tosses a plastic bottle into one of the Recycling Center’s collection bins. “I recycle,” said Sherman, “because it’s one thing that can improve the world and the community we live in.”
3. Nearly 75 locked collection bins throughout campus are serviced on a daily basis by student workers like Salvador Preciado.
4. Cristy Munoz pours bottles into a container that will be placed in the cart for transport back to the Recycling Center’s field office.
5. A cart from the Recycling Center, on its way to empty the bin containing Sherman’s bottle.
6. Student workers separate aluminum, glass and plastic into bins at the Recycling Center’s field office.
7. A truck arrives from Valley Recycling Center to pick up recyclables and continue processing them. The blue bin containing Sherman’s bottle is loaded onto the truck.
8. The blue bin is transported to the Valley Recycling Center where it is removed from the truck and placed on a scale.
9. Mountains of bottles await their journey up the baler conveyer belt.
10. Bottles are poured from the bin onto a conveyer belt heading for a massive baler, which condenses them. It takes eight bins of plastic bottles to make one 800 pound bale. The bottles squeezed into a bale that size save 38 cubic yards of landfill space.
11. The bale containing Sherman’s bottle emerges from the baler. Twenty-four bales of bottles will be loaded into a shipping container, trucked to San Diego and shipped overseas.
12. Once overseas, the bottles are broken down by a chemical process, extracting fiber that is woven into products like this shirt and lanyard. Bottle fibers also are popular in sock manufacturing. These products return to the United States and are sold to consumers.
Food for thought:
- The same baler that so efficiently smashes plastic bottles also compresses CSUN’s recycled cardboard, which has seven to 11 lives.
- Bales of cardboard weighing 2,400 pounds each are shipped overseas, where they are dissolved and their fibers reconstituted into boxes.
- A single bale of recycled cardboard is equivalent to saving 20 trees.
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