Large green bins have been placed on each floor of the building for the deposit of recyclable materials. These bins are taken to the building’s loading dock on Tuesdays, where the materials are picked up by Waste Management of Eastern New York, the private company that provides RPI’s waste management services.

In addition to the green bins, smaller gray bins have been provided for some rooms in the JEC for individuals to collect their own recyclables and take them to the larger bins. Steven Lauria, a senior in environmental engineering who is working to set up the program, said the intention is to "make it easy."

The bins were placed in the JEC during the evening of Wednesday, February 21. The first collection was the following Tuesday.

According to Lauria, the pilot program had been successful in its first week. "In a matter of days, we recovered about 1,200 pounds of paper," Lauria said.

Lauria said that since the Institute pays $150 per ton of trash disposed of by Waste Management, that comes out to an approximate savings of $90. If the program were implemented all over campus over the course of a year, the savings would be significant.

Lauria says the program couldn’t have been the success it was if it weren’t for the help of the maintenance staff in the JEC. They are the individuals responsible for taking the bins from the different floors to the loading dock.

"The custodians are a big part of it… They’re the ones who keep it running," he said.

The next step in the process will be the implementation of a similar program in the Rensselaer Union. The program will be started as soon as the bins for the Union are delivered.

Waste Management provides the green bins—which would have cost $120 apiece—for free under the contract between them and the Institute. The gray bins are paid for by the Institute, and cost about $9 apiece.

The JEC was chosen as the pilot building because it is one of the largest buildings on campus and because it produces large amounts of paper trash every year.

Before the implementation of the new program, the only recycling bins available were the large ones on the loading dock, which were rarely used.

Lauria says the true benefit of recycling is not reducing the trash that’s going into the landfills, but recovering resources that have already been used.

"Instead of having to cut down new trees, let’s use the trees that are already cut down," he says.