By Robin Ervin
Recycling at Rider University (November 2009)
LAWRENCE, N.J.- Several five-gallon plastic jugs of fresh yellow cooking oil sit
in the food storeroom. Freshly prepared salads and pizza pies sit on warming shelves
awaiting hungry students. Row upon row of soda in plastic bottles similarly waits in
refrigerated units to be bought and consumed. They all have one thing in common; in a
short period of time they will be considered garbage.
Daly’s and Cranberry’s use an average of 80-100 gallons of oil combined, each
week. Once the oil was a clean, pretty yellow. Now it is old, brown and filled with small
particles of food. Food that was once carefully cooked and prepped for serving to
customers is now garbage because its shelf life time has expired. Plastic bottles of soda,
now emptied, are tossed as refuse.
Everything that was so recently new is now consigned to the refuse heap as
unwanted garbage. This is a major problem in the food service departments everywhere.
The food service department at Rider University however, is working towards leaving
less of an impact on the environment and is making great strides toward sustainability.
The two cafés at Rider filter the oil twice a day to remove food particles and we
replace the oil every three days, at the longest; earlier if needed. The used oil is then
carried from the kitchen area in a pail to a container outside behind the café and deposited
in an oil vat dumpster.
The black, 3 ft high and 3 x 4 foot in diameter, used oil container looks like a
small square dumpster. A smaller sister to the large green 5 ft high 4x4 dumpsters used
for trash and recyclables that are located nearby. There is one used oil container each
located behind both Daly’s and Cranberry’s. Upon lifting the lid and looking inside the
oil vat, no blast of noxious smell escapes as it would upon opening a garbage can lid.
There is a barely noticeable smell when the container lid is lifted. The waste oil in
appearance looks like a medium brown slightly lumpy goo, with the consistency of
watery oatmeal.
The Waste Oil Recycling Inc. comes every two weeks with a truck, connects a
vacuum hose to the container and vacuums the oil out.
Melissa Greenberg, Rider’s sustainability coordinator is the main person
responsible for the recycling movement at Rider University.
“A lot of people may be surprised to learn is that all of our fryer grease is picked
up for free by a company called Waste Oil Recyclers, said Greenberg. “They then convert
the waste oil into biofuel for profit.”
Recycling the waste cooking oil is just one of the many ways that Rider
University is becoming more planet-friendly. Old electronic equipment and computers
are sent out to an electronics recycling company. Recycling bins for paper and plastic
bottles frequent the halls of the campus.
As prominent as the recycling effort appears at Rider, Greenberg believes that
more can be done. She and her staff are working at increasing students and faculty
awareness on the impact they have on the planet and to show the campus ways to be
more environmentaly-friendly both on campus and in their homes off campus.
One of the biggest problem facing Rider’s recycling effort is educating people
about the importance of recycling and how to decide if something is trash or recyclable.
“It’s ridiculous how much trash goes into a landfill every week that could have
been reprocessed into something useful!” exclaims Greenberg. “Sometimes individuals
will without thinking throw trash into recycling or recycling into the trash. Sometimes it’s
a matter of a person being unsure whether an item is recyclable, so they just throw it into
the trash. “I’ve noticed that people on campus are doing a much better job sorting their
recyclables and being aware of the impact they have on the environment, but we still
have a long way to go.”
Currently the sustainability office is having posters printed that will explain what
can and cannot be recycled.
“These posters will be posted in every Greek house and residence hall,” explains
Greenberg. “The posters will spell out what items are recyclable and what items are not.”
“For example, we now collect plastics for recycling that have the numbers 1 thru 7 on
them. These numbers can be found on the bottom of the plastic container inside a
triangle.”
Along with these plastic containers, cans, bottles and almost any type of paper can
be recycled. Items like pizza boxes, paper towels, napkins or tissues and food cans cannot
be recycled.
The process of collecting the recycling starts with small bins that are emptied
every day into the various larger recycling dumpsters behind the major campus buildings.
There are three main dumpster locations. One is behind Daly’s dining hall. One is
behind Cranberry’s and the other is behind the campus. There are three large, green 4 X 5
ft dumpsters, two for trash and one is clearly marked for recycling bottles and cardboard.
Waste Management empties these recycling dumpsters four times a week and takes the
refuse to a nearby recycling plant.
“We are doing a lot more than people think we are doing,” Greenberg said. “A lot
of the effort is behind the scenes.”
Currently Greenberg researching a way to further reduce Rider’s impact on the
landfills by finding ways to repurpose the campus’ waste food.
“One option would be to have it sent to a composting plant in Woodbridge NJ,”
said Greenberg. “Another would be to buy a composting machine for Rider. The
resulting compost could then be used on campus.” “Ideally, if we went that route, Rider
could then either sell the remaining compost or ask the local farms if they would pick it
up because if we started to compose our food waste, we would produce more compost
than we could possibly use.”
References:
Melissa Greenberg, sustainability coordinator -896-5000 ext 7559
Email: megreenberg@rider.edu