Campus environmentalists construct recycling tent

Students strolling outside Frist Campus Center last week were confronted with a tent full of cans, bottles and cardboard boxes intended to represent the volume of recyclable materials that are thrown away instead of recycled at Princeton every day.

The display — erected by Princeton Ecology Representatives and Building Services — was the brainchild of student "Eco-Reps," who raise awareness about environmental issues on campus in conjunction with the student group Greening Princeton. It will last until April 15.

To explain the exhibit, the Eco-Reps hung two signs on the tent detailing statistics intended to encourage onlookers to recycle more. "If the material displayed were recycled, 15.5 tons of wood and 20.8 barrels of oil would be conserved," one sign reads in part.

The display coincides with the nationwide Recyclemania competition, a 10-week event partially administered by the Environmental Protection Agency that tracks the level of recycling at colleges and universities across the nation.

Logistics for the display's coexistence with the Recyclemania competition did not go as smoothly as planned. The tent went up a few weeks after the competition had already started.

"We wanted to get the tent up a couple weeks earlier, around when Recyclemania began, but it took longer than we thought it would to organize," said Meredith Thompson '08, the eco-rep who came up with the idea for the display.

Additionally, the tent stood for the first few days without any signs explaining its significance.

Mark Smith '09, an eco-rep, Recyclemania coordinator and president of Greening Princeton, acknowledged that the lag time between the tent's appearance and the posting of the signs might have left some onlookers lost as to the display's purpose.

"When there weren't signs, people were pretty confused and thought [the tent and its contents were] a big pile of junk," he said, "but now it's definitely starting to make more sense."

The amount of recyclables in the tent is based on data collected by the Princeton eco-reps in dorms across campus. In each building, the eco-reps estimated how much material is recycled and how much recyclable material is thrown in the trash.

Since the data was based on estimates, Thompson said, Building Services reduced the tent display to two-thirds of the quantity reported by the eco-reps, so as not to dramatically overrepresent how much recyclable material is thrown out at Princeton.

"We had some concerns about the data collection techniques," Smith said. "It wasn't a perfect system by any means, but I think we were definitely within the right order of magnitude.

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Ruth Metzel '10, an eco-rep who participated in the data collection, said that the process taught her a lot about Princeton's recycling habits.

"Waste monitoring ... has forced me to face the reality of how much we waste here at Princeton," she said in an email. "Often there will be more recyclables than legitimate trash in people's waste bins."

The materials in the tent display are meant to mirror only the volume of recycled material that is thrown out, not the kinds of materials discarded, Smith said. While many of the recyclables thrown out in dorms are sheets of paper, he said, Building Services chose not to display actual samples of discarded papers under the tent because they sometimes contained personal information. Instead, the display's organizers used cardboard boxes, cans and bottles.

Smith also set up a display for Recyclemania on the 100-level of Frist containing three transparent boxes — one each for Harvard, Yale and Princeton — to show each university's ranking in the Recyclemania competition. The Harvard and Yale boxes were vandalized last week, Smith said, but have since been restored. According to the boxes, Princeton is currently recycling more than both Harvard and Yale.

Though no data has yet been collected on the impact of the tent outside Frist on Princeton recycling, Smith said he doubted it would make a significant difference.

"I wouldn't expect a huge increase in recycling," he said. "I think people notice it, but I don't think that that's really enough to really change most people's habits."

The display did attract the attention of campus visitors.

"I think it's really cool," said Angelica Gonzalez, a prospective student visiting the campus. "I think it could make people recycle more. It will definitely make them think."