GVSU Recycles…Even More!!!
Project Proposal
Team 2B or Not 2B
Introduction
In a world with an ever increasing population, the amount of waste produced is also
growing at an exponential rate. In 2009, over two and a half million tons of plastic bottles
were sold in the United States. Of that amount, only 28% were recycled, which left over 1.8
million tons of plastic bottles wasted and put into landfills (Hoy, n.d.). Our planet has a
limited supply of resources, and it cannot renew all of them fast enough to keep up with
our growing demand. All of those wasted resources may not affect individual people
currently, but the generations to come will be paying the consequences of our actions.
Some communities have implemented sustainability initiatives including recycling
programs to cut down on waste. Among these communities are colleges and universities,
including Grand Valley State University. Grand Valley State University (GVSU) has been
taking steps toward increasing recycling efforts in the community. Although efforts have
increased, it is not an impressive display of recycling capabilities. How can GVSU further
escalate its recycling participation throughout campus?
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Background
When walking around campus, there are many opportunities to reduce litter with
an abundant supply of garbage cans, yet there are very few recycling opportunities. There
are virtually no recycling bins outside of facilities, so students and faculty need to
intensively search different buildings just to recycle a water bottle or pop can. When people
face this situation, many do not have the time or motivation to find sparsely placed recycle
bins. At GVSU, only 36.7% of total waste was recycled in 09-10 school year. While this
percentage of participation is admirable, there is still clearly room for improving the
recycling effort.
For example, while participating the Scholars Institute in Niemeyer Learning and
Living Center, most of our activities are held in the multipurpose room. We hold sessions,
do group activities, and eat meals in this area and utilize many different types of resources
including paper products, plastic water bottles, and pop cans. Having all these recyclables,
we have observed many students looking around for a place to recycle them, but there is
none. Some students just end up throwing them away, while others leave them on tables,
forcing the food crew to pick up after them, and the products may still possibly be getting
thrown away. If the opportunity was presented to recycle those products, many students
would do so instead of throwing things away. Grand Valley is taking some initiative to put
sustainability programs into place. The dining centers provide composting and recycling
bins for students, faculty, and staff. "Zero-Waste" meals ensure all disposables are either
compostable or recyclable (Sustainability, 2011). This university has also participated in
RecycleMania, nationwide recycling competition, for the past three years. RecycleMania is
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held over a 10-week period where campuses all over the United States collect as much
recyclables as possible, the least amount of total trash, and have the highest recycling rate
(RecycleMania 2011, 2011). As a campus, we placed 177th out of 362 schools, still leaving
much room for improvement (Participating Schools, 2011). Although these steps have been
taken, there are many ways that GVSU can improve its recycling participation.
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Proposed Project
Our intended solution is to create an initiative to place a recycling bin next to every
public garbage can on the Grand Valley campuses. Each recycling bin will be a distinct blue
color to distinguish it from regular trash cans. Furthermore, we suggest posting fliers and
billboards around campus about all recyclable materials, why recycling is important, and
the benefits towards the environment and society. This would be boosting the awareness
and the availability of recycling opportunities. By doing that and informing students,
faculty, and staff of the specifics, they would be able to understand what it takes to recycle
and would be more likely to actually do so.
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Rationale
The main reasons that we are suggesting this solution are based upon why most
people do not recycle. Twenty percent of people do not recycle because of lack of
availability, twelve percent of people do not recycle because they believe it takes too much
effort, eleven percent do not recycle because they do not believe that it has a significant
impact, and two percent of people do not know how or understand the concept of recycling
(Corso, 2007). All of the solutions to these sub-problems are all seen in our main solution.
We believe that our proposal will work and will be successful in its goal because,
based on our research, the main problem why people do not make more effort to recycle is
the lack of opportunity. While Grand Valley does take an active participation in the
recycling effort, the effort still falls short in its ability and availability. The problem is that
there are not enough recycling opportunities on the Grand Valley campus, and the most
distinct lack of opportunity is the small number of recycling bins available to students and
staff members across campus, as compared to the highly prolific amount of waste bins
spread around campus. For example, in walking from Niemeyer to the Zumberge Library,
we counted more than 15 waste disposal units, with absolutely no recycling units available.
One can imagine how often students will have something to recycle on their way between
classes, and are forced to throw away their recyclables. With our proposed solution, all of
those missed opportunities could be rectified, and vast amount of campus waste would be
saved.
While trying to recycle the many cans of soda and bottles of water that we consume
after only three days at this institute, the lack of available recycling units made us have to
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carry our recyclables around for a long time until we could find an appropriate receptacle,
making it difficult to recycle. Because it was even more difficult for us to manage our
recyclables, we can imagine that every other student at Grand Valley would have the same
difficulties. With our proposed solution, the effort recycling takes would be reduced
exponentially because a convenient recycling bin would be located right next to the
trashcan. This way, students would not have to hold on to their recyclables all day,
searching building to building for a recycling bin. We know how important time can be to a
person with a heavy workload, so why should someone have to put so much time and effort
into having a scavenger hunt for a recycling bin?
To convince those in charge that this program would work, we would include an
informational flier on the side of each bin to explain the beneficial effects of recycling
versus not recycling. On these fliers, we will provide statistics to show how recycling has
helped the environment, as well as statistics on how not recycling contributes to the
massive amount of waste that goes into landfills each year. This will give people the
information about why recycling is important and hopefully get them to recycle more often.
It can also provide a reliable source of information for whoever wants to know or might
want to know more about recycling, and it may even inspire others to recycle in the future.
As an addendum to the aforementioned informational flier, we would include a
listing of what products can be recycled, what products cannot be recycled, and why those
products cannot be recycled. Many people, when they think of recycling, think of just
plastic bottles and aluminum cans, when the reality is that many other things can be
recycled, including paper, plastics, glass, and some metals. By providing a list of things that
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cannot be recycled, it will help to clear up any misunderstandings and will be informative
to anyone who wants to recycle in the future. Finally, if we include reasons why theses
certain items can and cannot be recycled, it will help people to understand the recycling
process, and answer any questions they may have.
We can make this work because the solution is simple and straightforward. Also,
from input that we’ve received this week from fellow students, they have had a similar
experience in trying to find available recycling options during the day in the Niemeyer
building and on their way to the library. This goes to show that there are student resources
and many sources of support that we can draw upon in our endeavor. Furthermore, we
believe that we can convince the Campus Sustainability Committee to adopt our proposal, if
we provide with sufficient student body feedback.
One way that we will argue concerns and justify our solution will be by using the
number one school in the RecycleMania contest, California State University in San Marcos,
California as a model for our recycling initiative (Participating Schools, 2011). They have
obtained their success by taking aggressive action towards recycling, just as we are trying
to propose. Furthermore, all of the main reasons that we found for why people do not
recycle are all addressed and solved in our solution.
As Grand Valley is such a major influence in the Grand Rapids area, what we are
proposing here can potentially be applied to the city of Grand Rapids. One of our team
members, Daniel Selgo, has been a resident of Grand Rapids for the past fifteen years and
has observed through his trips downtown that a similar problem exists in the city. If this
project is successful, Grand Valley can put a summary of this project on the official Grand
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Valley website along with its success rate. That way, other institutions in the Grand Rapids
area that are searching for ways to improve their own recycling program can use this as a
model.
Also, one bit of information that we found while searching for similar recycling
programs on the Internet was that most universities did not give details on what they were
doing to help recycling and how effective they were. If we were to post our findings and
our plans on this program, we could provide information on how effective our solution was
to anyone who was researching effective recycling programs. In that way, we would help
to prove that increasing the availability of recycling opportunities is a great way to increase
recycling rates on college campuses, in businesses and institutions, and cities countrywide;
that is, if our solution is truly effective.
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Project Plan
Activities/Assignment
Although Grand Valley has taken some initiative to create recycling programs, the
majority of products are still being wasted. The Sustainability Project focuses on
composting (Bartels, 2011), but there are no current initiatives solely focused on recycling.
We are proposing two simple changes. First, wherever there is a trashcan, put a recycling
bin next to that trashcan. This change could be implemented and phased in over time by
first adding recycling bins to one area of campus, both to observe the effects and make
costs more affordable so the amount of money required to implement the project can be
distributed over a manageable period of time. After a year, the number of resources being
recycled could be compared to other areas of campus where this change was not made. If
this new program was effective, then recycling bins could be expanded to the whole
campus.
The second idea has to do with the mass amount of pizza boxes being thrown away
because the grease makes them unrecyclable. Although pizza boxes cannot be recycled,
they can be composted (Bartels, 2011). While composting is not recycling, the outcome of a
recycled pizza box is better than the outcome of a landfilled pizza box. Even if students
could take these boxes to a dining facility where there are composting bins, it could
exponentially cut back on waste. Especially during exam time when many pizzas are
ordered for comfort food, fifty or more heavy-duty cardboard boxes could be taken out of
the waste. Just this one easy and minor change could help the university’s recycling
program in a major way. To encourage students to take this step, an initiative could be set
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in place similar to ones given with pop cans. Each pizza box returned could be rewarded
with fifty cents, or a similar amount, to use positive reinforcement and monetary incentive,
similar to the recycling of aluminum cans, that could cause the action to continue among
students, faculty, and staff.
Community support is also one of the biggest factors in making this proposal
possible. We have already talked to Bart Bartels, the project manager of the Sustainability
Community Development Initiative, and have garnered his support and the support of the
program. Students and faculty would also support this program; from our observations,
many have a desire to recycle, but do not have convenient means to do so. To carry out
these plans, we will discuss our milestones in the next section.
Milestones
We propose the following milestones: gather a team together, develop a financial
plan, design a marketing campaign, and have a rally or peer to peer program to gain
support.
Gather a Team Together/Team and Leadership
To gather a team to implement our plan, we will gather together a group of ten
volunteers consisting of five experienced faculty or staff members and five interested
students, preferably upperclassmen who are looked up to by younger students, to take an
interest in the program. The experienced team members will decide which students are
best suited for the task. From there, students can brainstorm ideas for campus activities.
Develop a Financial Plan
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To pay for the costly recycling bins, a name program would be developed. Just as
buildings on campus are named after people, likewise would be true for the recycling bins.
Each person or family would have access to a campus map and would get to choose where
the recycling bin with their name on it would be placed, so long as it is relatively spread
apart from other bins. This would help defray the cost of the new program.
Design a Marketing Campaign/Student Awareness Rally
To market our program we would try to contact Doug Lipinski, who is the head of
Athletic Marketing. He is the person who is in charge of marketing all athletic events and
the events that are performed throughout athletic games such as half-time performances,
the latter of which is the most important to our marketing strategy. Probably the most
popular events at Grand Valley are the Laker football games, which are times that a
majority of the student body is gathered in one place. We would suggest to Doug to allot a
time for a two to five minute slot during the game to announce our recycling program,
inform the students and determine the student interest in the project. To further our
marketing campaign, we would post informational fliers on or around strategic areas such
as bathroom doors, bus stops, cafeterias, dorm entrances, elevators, and school billboards.
Measures of Success/Assessment Plan
If our project is put into practice, and the amount of receptacles on campus is
increased, our measures of success will be determined by how many students use the new
bins. In order to track our success, we would observe how often the bins are filled and we
will hold a student and faculty poll to see how often they have found the new bins useful.
Another measure of success will be if the gross amount of trash exported from Grand Valley
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decreases, while the gross amount of recyclables and composting exported from Grand
Valley increases. Another measure of our success will be assessing a crowd’s response to a
recycling promotional event at a football game or major college event. If our promotional
event elicits a positive response such as a cheer from a student crowd, we will know that
our campaign will be successful. To assess the success of our project, we will take the
information from our measures of success and develop ways in which we can use that
information to improve our program. For instance, if the recycling bins are not being used
or the recycling rate does not increase, then we can poll the students about their feelings on
the subject and use their feedback to assess and improve our program.
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Risk Analysis
The major weakness of our proposal is that it has many assumptions. The reasoning
for this, however, is that we haven't been able to find any prior instances in which this
solution has been applied, let alone a story of success. Furthermore, we have assumed that
we will be able to garner support from the student body for our project. Our assumptions
are extremely sound because we are using basic logic and have made many observations
that apply to us as students and to other students as well even though they are not based
on strictly scholarly research.
We are well aware that a major issue of recycling is economic sustainability. The
process of sorting and recycling materials is a time-consuming and expensive process.
Because Grand Valley already has a highly commendable recycling program, we are fully
aware that added recycling effort may be more costly than the university budget is willing
to afford. However, while recycling is a time consuming and expensive process, so is the
disposal of waste through standard garbage disposal programs. However, we propose that
however much extra recyclable material is put through our enhanced recycling program
will reduce that amount from the garbage bins. This would clear up school dumpsters and
possibly lessen the number of trash bins needed on campus. To prove our point, we will
need to collaborate with the campus Sustainability Committee to do an analysis of the
efficiency of the current recycling and waste disposal program as opposed to our own
proposed program.
The major cost for this proposal is the recycling bins themselves. After a quick
search online, we came up with two recycling bins that are both very supportive for what
they will be required as well as at a low cost. The first of which is a Rubbermaid Black
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Perforated Steel 25 Gallon Can/Bottle Recycling Can for $396.90 each (Rubbermaid Black
Perforated Steel 25 Gal Can, 2011). The advantages of this model is that it is metallic which
makes it very durable, is able to store a large amount and is very similar to the garbage bins
that are already being used on the campus grounds so that they will blend in better. The
drawback is that the price to purchase the necessary number of bins becomes very costly
when buying in bulk. The other bin we have found is a Rubbermaid 50 Gallon Plaza Bottle
and Can Recycling Center for $605.00 each (Plaza Bottle & Can Recycling Container, 2009).
The advantage to this bin is that it is extremely large, however it is plastic which makes it
susceptible to damage and it has a very high price for each bin. We would suggest the first
bin because its lower price will be a major advantage in maintaining low amounts of costly
expenditures. Unfortunately, we were unable to find an actual number of garbage bins on
campus, however we are able to make an estimate for the number of cans that we could use
to kick-off this program. If we were to begin with 100-150 recycling bins then the price
range of the recycling bins would be $39,690.00-$59,535.00 for the Rubbermaid, black,
perforated steel recycling bin while the price range would be $60,500.00-$90,750.00 for
the Rubbermaid, blue, plastic recycling bin. These figures were found by simply
multiplying the price of the recycling bins by 100 and 150 respectively.
Even though this project will require a large amount of capital, we have thought of a
few ways to raise money for the recycling bins. We could set up a fund raiser in which
anyone who was interested could make a small donation and have their name, family name
or the name of someone else as well as an optional quote engraved on a recycling bin that
would be placed around campus. Additionally, we could ask students to take the ten cent
deposit that they get back from returning cans from the recycling initiative that Michigan
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has set into place and donating it to our program so that those students are "supporting
greater recycling by recycling." (Issue: Beverage Container Recycling, 2004)
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Executive Summary
The purpose of our research proposal is to increase the availability of recycling
opportunities on the Grand Valley State University Campus. Our main focus in increasing
availability of recycling opportunities is to increase the ratio of recycling bins to garbage
units. We believe that if we can simply place more recycling bins across the campus, then
student and faculty participation in recycling will increase. Studies have shown that lack of
participation in recycling efforts is mainly due to the lack of availability of convenient
recycling containers, as well as the amount of effort needed to recycle, lack of belief in the
impact of recycling, and the lack of understanding of the concept of recycling. If our
proposal can be accepted and funded, our introduction of more units along popular student
commute routes across the campus will increase opportunities for students to recycle. If
the average student drinking a soda on the walk from the Niemeyer building to the
Zumberge Library finishes his or her beverage and, instead of disposing of it in a trash bin,
deposits it in a conveniently placed recycling bin next to the trash receptacle, our goal will
have been accomplished.
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Appendix: Literature Review
Environmental Discipline
Wright (2010), Class of 1 (2011), and Rappaport (2008) have all found that
recycling reduces a negative aspect affecting the environment. Reductions in pollution and
use of energy and natural resources were displayed throughout Wright’s work. Class of 1
presented information that supported Wright’s statements, including the conservation of
natural resources and energy, also the lessening of pollution. Declining greenhouse gas
emissions were discussed in Class of 1’s journal, which was also included in Rappaport’s
article. These authors are revealing the importance that recycling has to benefit the
environment. When energy and natural resources are preserved, the environment’s
resources are not being depleted (Wright, 2010, Class of 1, 2011). The overall health of the
environment is increased as harmful pollution subsides(Wright, 2010, Class of 1, 2011).
Greenhouse gases are increasing because of the consumer culture that developed(Class of
1, 2011, Rappaport, 2008). The amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the deforestation,
collection, transportation, and manipulation of raw materials is detrimental to the
environment. By recycling, the waste of resources is reduced, which prohibits the chain of
events leading to a drop in environmental health from taking place.
Economic Discipline
The economic issues with recycling are very widespread and more often than not
give evidence of why recycling is not effective and overall not very beneficial no matter
how environmentally helpful. The article Big Benefits of Recycling Bottles and Cans (2008)
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takes an approach of using statistics and data to prove that the most effective way of
increasing recycling rates is to include a deposit return on all recyclable cans and bottles.
The article shows that legislators are focused more on creating "bills to deal with the 8.3
billion drink bottles we consume each year" instead of focusing on integrating a return
deposit which has proven to increase the number of people who recycle and are happy to
do so "around 90%." Furthermore, the article goes to say that the deposit return "doubles
bottles and can recycling rates" as well as “reducing recycling costs by over $84 million."
This can relate to our project because it can give us an idea about how we can
increase recycling. By including some sort of reward or incentive to recycle, then more
students would be likely to recycle more.
Marketing Discipline
From our literature search, we found four unique techniques from four separate
sources on the marketing of a recycling campaign. Each of these four sources examined
different instances in which methods of marketing have been use to promote the concept of
recycling These diverse methods include adopting a slogan, promoting love for the
environment, teaching recycling values early to young children, examining recycling and
marketing from a psychological standpoint, and releasing a toolkit to the general public in
order to show appropriate methods for recycling plastic bottles.
In the first article, called “How to Start a Bottle Recycling Program”, Business Trends
examined a “toolkit” released by the National Association for PET Container
Resources(NAPCOR), essentially a highly detailed brochure released to the general public
to raise awareness about the details of properly disposing of and recycling PET bottles.
This toolkit, officially named the iPET Recycling Toolkit, was released to offer tips on how
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to build an effective PET recycling program. The article also expounded on how
Pennsylvania State University utilized this recycling toolkit to build a recycling program,
and how that new recycling program has gained Penn State over 125,000 dollars in
“tipping fees.”
The second article, published by the New Straits Times, titled “College Launches
Recycling Program”, goes into detail on how Sunway College managed to develop a yearlong recycling marketing campaign in cooperation with a non-profit organization. This nonprofit organization helped them come up with a slogan to assist their campaign, “A healthy
society would not prevail if we do not save the environment.” This slogan was mainly
geared towards that college’s effort to raise awareness about the beneficial effects of
recycling on the environment and the negative effects on the environment when people do
not recycle. Due to this awareness campaign, that college was able to implement a waste
management program that went about obtaining recycling bins for the college campus.
Another article, titled “College Recycling Drive a Success”, details the story about how
a college in Malaysia instituted a successful recycling program by gearing the focus of their
marketing scheme towards young children. They drew up informational posters that
children could appreciate, and engaged in fun-filled recycling-centered activities such as
making models out of recyclable materials. The college also engaged in several newspaper
recycling campaigns, and successfully recycled over 10 tons of newspapers.
The final article, “Recycling as a Marketing Problem: A Framework for Strategy
Development”, focused not so much on examining marketing recycling from an economic
point of view, but from a standpoint of psychoanalysis. In this article, the authors examined
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the psychological motivations behind why people do and do not recycle, and from that,
examined the effects of a marketing campaign on a person’s decision to recycle. Using this
information, they published the article to release any helpful research that might be used to
help promote recycling programs.
These articles were all similar in that they examined the effects of a successful
marketing campaign on an established college recycling program. These articles were able
to show that marketing is indeed an effective way to achieve awareness for the recycling
awareness campaign.
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