Broadway recycling bins returned despite misuse

The Portland State Sustainability Office recently removed recycling bins in the Broadway Building for a three-week period due to improper use, leaving resident students with limited options for disposing recyclable materials.

PSU Sustainability Coordinator Dresden Skees-Gregory said the bins were removed on April 30 because students were continually filling them with unsanitary materials such as used condoms, tampons and bottles of urine.

The bins were pulled from the eight floors that house students, leaving the first two floors of retail and classroom space in the Broadway Building available for student recycling use.

After repeated warnings to not put trash in the recycling bins, the sustainability office made the decision to remove them. Last week they were returned, but if the situation does not improve, Skees-Gregory, said the sustainability office is willing to remove the bins again.

“I think there’s a little bit of ‘You can’t tell me what to do’ going on,” Skees-Gregory said. “I think the rest of it’s kind of laziness.”

Sustainability office student employees who pick up recycling bins are not trained to handle biohazardous materials, Skees-Gregory said. Asking them to empty the bins in Broadway would put their health at risk, she said.

The rule of thumb, Skees-Gregory said, is to not put anything in the bins that you wouldn’t want someone you sit next to in class to handle.

“Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to sit next to someone and have them handle your used tampon?” Skees-Gregory said.

“We are here to do recycling, that’s what we are all about. It never makes us happy to make recycling go away,” Skees-Gregory said, but added, “We are out to protect the health of our employees.”

The Broadway Building is not the only building that has issues like this, Skees-Gregory said, but there has never been a building as consistently bad as Broadway.

The Ondine building recycling bins were pulled for similar reasons last year and were not returned, Skees-Gregory said.

Because the Ondine building does not have indoor trash bins, the students would only fill the recycling bins up with trash if they were returned, Skees-Gregory said.

One student in Broadway, Luke Raymond, said it is strange that PSU would remove recycling bins when it continuously prides itself on being environmental and sustainable.

“I thought it was kind of ineffective and not the best solution to take them [the recycling bins] away,” Raymond said.

Raymond said that while the bins were gone, he threw away his recyclables rather than take them to the bins on the ground floors. The bins are small and often full, Raymond said.

“I just kind of dumped it. I felt kind of bad about it,” Raymond said and added that he wasn’t the only one to do so. “Most people are lazy like me.”

Skees-Gregory said the sustainability office is working with resident assistants to keep reminding students what is recyclable and what is not. Janitors will now also remove trash from the recycling bins if they see it.

Raymond said he uses the recycling bins and hasn’t seen anything biohazardous. Mostly he’s just seen common trash, he said.

“How many people are really doing that?” Raymond said about unsanitary materials being disposed of in the bins. “I just thought it was odd that that was their solution, to take them away.”

The Broadway Building has previously been recognized with a Silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating for its sustainability achievements, like water and energy saving. It also boasts Portland’s largest eco-roof, which reduces storm water runoff and, in turn, water pollution.

Earlier this month PSU finished RecycleMania, a 10-week competition against over 200 other schools to reduce waste and increase recycling. PSU ranked 41st in the grand champion category. Last year PSU ranked 19th overall.

Other rankings for PSU include coming in 103rd for pounds of recyclables collected per person with 13.28 pounds, and 13th in the waste-minimization category with 60.48 pounds of waste created per person.

PSU ranked fourth in the waste-minimization category with an average of 38.48 pounds of waste per person last year.