Recycling trickery: The case of the vanishing cash

by Edward Russell Johnson | May 31st, 2007

Last year, the University of York received £1145 from the council for recycling waste. This money (£5 per tonne of waste recycled) is an incentive provided by the council to increase recycling.

Yet, rather than rejoicing at the recycling of a whopping 229 tonnes of waste, we are forced to ask the question: where is this money?

The college Eco Reps, as has been noted before in these hallowed pages, have seen none, despite the heavy burden placed on them by the University’s recycling scheme. Indeed, the vast majority of them are still lacking the proper resources and have the gruelling and dangerous task of removing huge amounts of dirty glass and tin cans without any assistance or even a pair of rubber gloves.

Instead, the £1145 raised from the University’s recycling efforts seems to have sunk into a bottomless pit of bureaucracy. The problem is that recycling duties have been transferred from the Commercial Services department to Campus Services.

This is presumably in the hope that the money will be used more appropriately by those who have the campus in mind, rather than by those whose primary concern is commerce and capital.

So, what could be done instead?

For starters, the Eco Reps would be considerably more able and indeed more willing to do the college recycling if they were given the resources they need. The health hazards of doing college recycling are obvious, yet they appear to be given little thought by whomever currently has the money from the council in their hot little hands.

If handled correctly, the incentive from the council could be used to make initial, minor improvements to campus recycling, such as more safety equipment and more bins emptied more frequently. These improvements would increase the efficiency of campus recycling as a whole and might even turn it into a money-making enterprise.

Of course, generation of capital is not what recycling should be about, but if it appeals to the University management, then that has to be a good thing.

Recycling can be a business, and it can be a profitable one, but first there must be an orderly and effective system in place, and not one that depends so extensively on student volunteers who are overworked already.