Feature photo by Hannah Carley
Story by Hannah Carley and Gus Wright
MTSU Recycling and Students for Environmental Action (SEA) push successful initiatives to promote a healthier campus ecosystem together despite insufficient funding leading to functional issues.
MTSU Recycling shut down with the rest of the world during the pandemic – once reopened, it overcame another challenge: a lack of resources. Staffing deficiencies, funding deficits and contamination plague the program, as recycling requires higher staffing volumes to offer services like accepting glass or single-stream recycling. Along with the unexpected issues, they still have to keep up with their ordinary services of accepting and sorting through acceptable and non-acceptable recyclables.
MTSU’s Biology Department founded the recycling program 50 years ago after the Biology Club took a shine to recycling newspapers. After the retirement of passionate program head Patrick Doyle, the department transferred the program to the Facilities Service Department and the Center for Energy Efficiency in 2004. The Facilities Services Department is responsible for the recycling center through the CEE, which manages operations.
Linda Hardymon, assistant manager of the CEE, runs the program.
Recycling Program
The recycling center drop-off areas closed during the pandemic and remain closed while it faces issues maintaining the Sustainable Campus Fee Fund due to vendor availability, contamination, limited access to certain commodity collections and staffing, according to MTSU Facilities Services Summary of Services Annual Report.
The university appointed Hardymon to manage the program in the 1970s. Despite its lack of resources, she continued to prioritize the university, she said.
In the same year she was appointed, Hardymon partnered with the Tennessee Environmental Council (TEC), hosting the “Recycling Roundup” for Rutherford County. They recycled materials, including tires, electronics, shredded paper, scrap metal, clothing, etc., with 430 participants, according to the Annual Report. They collected a staggering 51,877 pounds of recyclables, Hardymon said.
Staffing deficiencies and funding deficits
SEA averages around six to eight volunteers for every event they host, SEA president Tom Smith said, but the jobs offered by the recycling program receive little to no attention.
“I think that recycling needs more funding to be able to pay people more and get more employees,” Smith said.
Supplied by an inadequate number of employees and a below-average monetary allowance, Smith said the recycling program withdrew their glass receiving services.
“I know there’s been a few things like that where they’ve had to scale down services that they previously offered,” Smith said. “…It seems like a step in the wrong direction.”
Contamination
Contamination is a core issue of the recycling program. Students lack awareness of the campus waste disposal parameters, which curbs the recycling program’s overall sorting and selling process. With low staff on hand, recycling must shift its operation procedures.
“As noted on the recycling website, community members are directed to seek out Rutherford County waste/recycle drop-off sites off campus for bulk recyclables,” the MTSU director of news and media relations Jimmy Hart said.
The only drop-off area for public use is for aluminum cans, and it’s along the campus perimeter off Greenland Drive. There aren’t multiple drop-off areas for campus or community use to prevent contamination of the recyclables, according to an email from Hardymon to Hart.
“We had problems with the vendors wanting uncontaminated [recyclables],” she said. “We’re here to serve the campus we cater to by tolerating the contamination.”
Vendors
The issues with the recycling program shifted alongside its management to the utilities department. Vendors accept recyclables in exchange for money, making them a valued source of income for the department, Hardymon said.
Rampant recycling container contamination and no staff to sort through the debris left Hardymon with vendors unwilling to accept MTSU’s recycled waste, she said.
Recyclable materials on MTSU’s campus must be reusable, placing parameters on what the recycling department can process on campus, as “the vendors call the shots,” Hardymon said.
“The issue is staff,” Hardymon said. “The second issue is vendors. We don’t collect glass because…we don’t have a vendor that will take glass.”
This caused the MTSU Recycling program to strive for efficiency, dealing with finding staff who will work for the program and listening to community queries and suggestions from anyone willing to contribute.
“[We] tried to set up work-study,” Hardymon said. “[We] tried to set up temps. Temps right now are retired people.”
Students for Environmental Action
Hardymon permits SEA to perform a hefty recycling duty yearly: tidying the tailgates. Every weekend of football season, students litter the grass with confetti, cans and debris, which the organization collects into large black trashbags.
“We’re able to just collect recyclables for that to try and keep campus areas less trashed,” Tom Smith said.
SEA discusses green initiatives with the student body at their tent while others tidy debris, informing the public of disposal sites within the community. After the party ended, they got to work on the clean-up: collecting cans.
They’ve submitted projects to the Sustainability Fund, such as the learning garden – an organic garden the club uses on campus – but financial projects are more difficult to pass than others.
“We submitted a bill to SGA [Student Government Association] to raise the fund because right now, the fees that students pay every year hasn’t increased since 2006,” Smith said. “That leaves a lot of projects not funded every year.”
Smith worked with SGA Senator Alex Torres to ask for a gradual increase in funds, and the SGA Senate passed the bill. Smith emailed SGA President Michai Mosby at the beginning of this year for an update, and Mosby confirmed he’d respond, but he still hasn’t.
For SEA, their financial progress slowed, then screeched to a halt.
“A four-dollar increase each year until we hit the $20 that our initial petition…as we went to the Senate meeting, talked at it, and it passed, but nothing’s really come of it since,” Smith said. “I heard something about it getting vetoed.”
Sidelines reached out to Mosby for a comment, but he has yet to respond.
Look toward the future
Linda Hardymon pioneered creations that cultivated a sustainable campus, such as filtered water stations and solar-powered benches across campus grounds. The student body utilizes such stations daily while walking to and from class.
She continues to look for ways to improve the program through innovation, collaboration and communication. Hardymon asked what could be improved to ensure the future success of the MTSU recycling program.
“I’m always open to hearing someone’s suggestion for bettering the program,” Hardymon said.
Faculty Facilities is the fund’s largest source for projects, but SEA implores students, staff and faculty to submit their own research projects. Facilities submissions are important, but other people are encouraged as well, Smith said.
“People should submit projects to it,” Smith said. “I think people with ideas should do the research and submit projects.”
Hannah Carley and Gus Wright are reporters for MTSU Sidelines.
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