Penn State Intercom......October 18, 2001
University Park recycling
'going to another level'
By Gary W. Cramer
Public Information
Hidden away from prying eyes like the laboratories in which bygone alchemists tried to turn lead into gold, there is a secluded spot on the campus fringe where the flotsam and jetsam of daily life waits to be transformed into unexpectedly new things. But here, the magic works -- discarded newspapers and scrap metal turn into scholarships, pallets become plant bedding, dumpsters metamorphose into life-saving training equipment and soda cans beget honeycombs.
Al Matyasovsky, supervisor of Central Support Services with the Office of Physical Plant, shows off the outdoor site to visitors in order to share the waste management lessons being learned here, and to demonstrate that it can handle more activity by far in the future.
"Penn State has
gone from recycling 12 percent of the material that we could handle in
1995 to nearly 33 percent today, and that's something to be proud of,"
he says. "Our goal now is to reach 67 percent of capacity, and with the
kind of creative participation we've seen across the campus so far, I'm
sure we'll get there. It will mean, for example, increasing our capture
of mixed office paper for recycling from the current 800 tons per year
to 1,400 tons." 
There's more to this goal than just saving resources in an age of greater environmental awareness. Matyasovsky gestures at a giant bin at one side of the recycling loading area where scrap metal waits to be picked up by John Kustaborder Jr. Salvage, a Howard firm, and then to bins on the opposite side where tons of newspaper similarly wait for the ministrations of Superior Waste Services in State College.
"Without a recycling
collection process in place, this material could end up in a landfill.
Instead, arrangements with the organizations that will do the actual recycling
generate scholarship money for our students," he noted. 
Other recycling initiatives raise money for worthy causes, as well: Efforts at Beaver Stadium and The Bryce Jordan Center benefit the United Way, cans are collected by IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon participants for the good of the Four Diamonds Fund for children with cancer at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and materials collected during a celebrity golf tournament aid the Second Mile organization for Pennsylvania youth.
Beyond the glass, cans, plastics, mixed office paper and newspaper that faculty, staff and students are encouraged to place in readily available containers in nearly all University buildings, it seems the campus has no end of ways to first create detritus and then salvage it. Fallen tree limbs, shrubbery prunings, uneaten food, animal waste and more get composted; worn out wooden pallets once used to keep containers off the ground and aid movement via forklift are ground into mulch; bricks and stone left over from renovations find new homes.
Damaged and worn out dumpsters also come to the recycling area for use by local Alpha Fire Company emergency personnel who are training for firefighting and using the "jaws of life" for freeing victims from auto accidents.
Even nature itself turns some of the refuse to its own advantage. A bin filled to the brim with about 30 cubic yards of soda cans (just seven days' worth from on-campus collections) hums with the activity of bees that visit to collect sugars from leftover drops. Some of the bees reside in nearby box hives, where the sugars become honey to help the colonies thrive.
So thorough is the recycling site that OPP is developing an adjacent parklet at which students learning the science of waste management can gather.
Matyasovsky describes the University's commitment of personnel, money and equipment to recycling as a process that is "going to another level" in this decade.
"We're asking everyone to pause and think, 'we're doing a third of what we could do, so what can we do to improve our collection.' Those of us in the Physical Plant hope that in your area, you will identify some easy ways to improve recycling, and we will support your efforts. If you help gather recyclable material, we'll get it where it needs to go."
More information on the Penn State Recycling Policy (AD34) may be found on the Web at http://guru.psu.edu/policies/AD34.html. More information on the Recycling Guidelines can be found at http://www.opp.psu.edu/divisions/ops/cs/css.htm or by calling (814) 863-4719.
Gary W. Cramer can be reached at gwc104@psu.edu.