Fall 2004
Starting the Cycle
by Darcey Maher
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Richard Neyer, AS Recycle Center manager, has worked at the facility for 15 years. He originally worked there as a Western student. |
Pioneers of Western Washington University’s original recycling program drove 180 miles round-trip to process recyclables. They stomped aluminum cans by foot and crushed glass in barrels using a car axial and a wheel hub. They worked for free.
Students use hydraulic lifts to load 55-gallon drums of recyclables onto Ford trucks. Between classes, student employees schedule time to transport hundreds of the drums brimming with paper, bottles and cans to Western’s recycling center. Loud music and shattering glass echo throughout the center as students hand-sort Western’s salvageable waste.
Today, the AS Recycle Center has 13 paid student employees, three forklifts, five trucks and a paper baler, said Richard Neyer, the AS Recycle Center manager.
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During the past three decades, Western’s recycling program has transformed from an all-volunteer pilot project to a state-mandated university requirement. The efforts of individual students and the community championed the recycling program through financial crises, lack of university support, suspected arson and policy changes. After 33 years of service, the AS Recycle Center is one of the oldest recycling programs in Washington.
“Ultimately, what was started by a couple of students at Huxley became, by law, a necessary thing to do in Washington,” said Harry Patz, a 1973 Western graduate and founder of the recycling program.
Established in 1971, the recycling program was part of the former Huxley Environmental Reference Bureau, a library and resource center of Huxley College of the Environment. The program initially was part of a feasibility study for a community recycling center.
Local distributors, such as the Bellingham Rainier beer factory, bought back empty bottles to reuse, but at the time, no public recycling services existed. Patz said most companies that recycled did so because raw materials were expensive.
“We saw recycling as a great way to raise money and solve environmental problems,” he said.
Patz said he and fellow student Jay Nelson received permission from Western to remodel the “Zimmerman House,” an abandoned building on campus property, for the program’s sorting and storage facility, now the current location of the Wade King Student Recreation Center.
“Huxley operated out of two houses, and one of them was quite literally a dump,” he said.
The HERB recycling center had no community collection, but people could drop off materials.
A 14-ton diesel truck rented from the Institute of Environmental Alternatives transported materials to manufacturing facilities for recycling. Students took paper waste to Georgia-Pacific in Bellingham, glass to Northwest Glass Co. in Seattle and cans to M. & T. Chemical Co., according to a 1972 recycling center report Patz wrote.
To increase support for recycling, the center distributed pamphlets that read, “Complaining about the environment is one thing, doing something about it is another,” Patz said.
Dennis Smith, a 1976 Western graduate who worked at the HERB recycling center, said attracting volunteers was a burden and turnover rates were high. The drive to Seattle and the manual labor dissuaded many students from participating for extended periods of time.
“We were living in a throwaway society,” said Barry Wenger, a senior environmental planner for the Department of Ecology and former HERB recycling center volunteer. “Recycling had yet to prove itself.”
In October 1974, the Zimmerman House burned until only a shell remained, according to an edition of The Western Front. The fire chief suspected arson, but no suspects were named.
A grant from Alcoa-Intalco Aluminum Corp. financed the construction of a new building one block south of the HERB recycling center’s original location. Six students lived in the house and exchanged labor for rent, Smith said.
The new recycling center included a clothing and household-items exchange, according to a 1975 edition of The Front. Within a year of the fire, 60 people volunteered at the center.
Financial misfortune struck again, however, when the recycling center’s truck broke down.
The fledgling Huxley College couldn’t afford to pay for repairs, so Huxley students wrote a proposal to the AS. In response, the AS absorbed the center’s financial responsibility and recommended HERB receive an additional $2,234, according to a 1976 edition of The Front.
“The student body always accepted the necessity of the recycling program,” Smith said. “It was Western’s administration we had to convince.”
By 1985, Western’s administration had yet to establish an official fund for the recycling center.
Social awareness and support for recycling, however, was increasing.
The recycling center’s community drop-off ended when Bellingham established a curbside recycling program in 1986, said Carol Rondello, a 1979 Western graduate who helped Bellingham Community Recycling spearhead curbside collection.
“Like the (AS) Recycle Center, we were trying to prove a point,” Rondello said. “The City
Council didn’t see (curbside collection) as econom-ically feasible.”
According to a report to Western’s president by the University Recycling Task Force, a group that researched and made recommendations for recycling at Western, the university saved $25,000 in 1984 because of AS recycling efforts. The report estimated the center salvaged 250 tons, or 20 percent, of Western’s waste stream. Three years later, formal contracts with the residence halls, dining services and academic buildings officially funded the AS Recycle Center.
“If we threw everything we collected into the garbage, how much more would that cost the
university in disposal costs?” Neyer said.
He said the AS Recycle Center makes $6,000 to $7,000 a year in annual sales but no longerturns a profit. Nevertheless, it saved 927,380 pounds of solid waste from entering landfills in 2003, according to AS Recycle Center data. Neyer said the poundage of recyclable materials collected has stabilized since the early ’90s. He attributes this trend to the Waste Not
Washington Act, which passed in 1990.
The act required public universities in Washington to recycle 50 percent of their waste stream by 1995 under the Government Options to Landfill Disposal, or the GOLD plan. Because
Western was one of the only universities with a recycling program at that time, Central Washington University and Washington State University looked to Western as a model for how to run their recycling programs Neyer said.
The AS Recycle Center finally received the financial support and recognition it sought in 1995 when construction on a permanent recycling facility began. With official funding from Western, the AS Recycle Center officially established itself, Neyer said.
“Decades of support from students and the community showed that grassroots activism can influence positive policy change,” Rondello said.