Plastic recycling bins can be found in Residence Halls, and in some buildings. WKU Recycling is working to earn money to purchase bins for plastic collection. In the meantime, you have several options:
- You can purchase a bin for your department, floor, or building for plastic collection and arrange with WKU Recycling to have the bottles picked up from your building's recycling area. You are responsible for getting your plastic recycling from inside your building to outside, and we will take it from there.
- You can collect your plastic and take it to the Big Red Bin at Surplus and Supply. Please remember to empty contents of bottles, #1 and #2 plastic only, and no plastic bags in the bin.
- You can just say no to plastic!
While we are working to expand the plastic recycling program at WKU, there are some challenges with plastic recycling that make it difficult. The biggest problem is that plastic is worth zero revenue as a recyclable (in our area). The good news is that products made with recycled plastic are becoming more common. Purchasing such products (such as the cool new entrance mats in Facilities Management - made with PET bottles) helps increase the value of plastic as a recyclable. This means that someday we may get revenue for our plastic. Our best bet is to try to use less plastic. Number one tip: don't buy bottled water - use a fabulous re-usable bottle, the newest fashion accessory!
Unlike Aluminum's 95% recycle rate or Glass' infinitable re-use, Plastic only recycles once and then it's, "Hola landfill!"
Melting glass together and letting it cool makes more glass. Aluminum cans are all made up of a standard alloy composition; reusing their material makes more cans of the same standard alloy. Plastics are not created equal; there are no industry standards for plastic manufacturing so even #1 & #2 plastic bottles that look exactly alike may be different in chemical composition. This makes smelting plastics together kind of like trying to mix two different brands of paint. All the various chemicals can react with one another, and even deadly gases can emit from the process. In short, Plastic is really difficult to recycle and almost not worth a cheap rug (unless it's one of those cool entrance mats made from PET bottles!).
The initial origin of Glass is superheated sand. Sand is just finely sedimented dirt with choice minerals mixed here and there. As long as we have dirt, we have sand, we have glass, and recycled glass can infinitely make more glass.
The initial origin of aluminum is a mining process for the ore. The process is very energy consuming and isn't really sustainable, but when an aluminum product is produced its material can be recycled to make more aluminum products. Aluminum recycling is less damaging to the Earth, conserves our raw aluminum resources, and can be repeated many times over.
The initial origin of our "valuable" plastics is our—get this—our very valuable oil. Yes, that is the same barrel of oil that your gas was refined from. How much is oil per barrel these days? Now think about how much Plastic we use. Our rising market prices aren't just from gas and the cost of transport. We use oil for our plastic products and their plastic packaging, and so the things we keep buying keep inflating in price. Now combine these facts with plastic's terrible recyclability. Viola! The Thunderdome doesn't seem too unlikely anymore now does it?
