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Hanley Sustainability Institute

Designing a new system for recycling and zero waste efforts in Marycrest

By Lia Schmidt

New year, new recycling habits.

Starting in the spring 2025 semester, Marycrest Residence Hall will have brand new recycling hubs and zero-waste signage. The recycling hubs are centrally located in the common area on each wing of the building for students to drop off their recycling. Trash will remain in designated trash rooms. Every trash room and recycling hub will be labeled with either a “trash” or “recycling” poster, which includes words and photos of the types of materials that belong in each category.

This new system was designed, tested and implemented by students as a part of a summer-long fellowship program with the Hanley Sustainability Institute (HSI). Thanks to funding from Rumpke Waste and Recycling, the project was able to expand as a permanent system in Marycrest, with hopes to expand these efforts to all residence halls in the future. Hear more from last summer’s Zero Waste Fellow, Lia Schmidt, to learn how the system was developed: 

Last summer, I had the opportunity to work as the Zero Waste Fellow for the Hanley Sustainability Institute. I worked on several small projects to improve zero-waste efforts on campus, but my biggest project was piloting a new recycling program in Marycrest. I tested three changes to the organization and location of trash and recycling bins to see which would have the biggest impact on decreasing cross-contamination between trash and recycling.

There are a lot of reasons why this was an important project to work on. First, cross contamination between trash and recycling is a huge problem. If recyclable materials end up in trash cans, they will be taken to landfills, meaning the materials will lose their potential to be broken down and reused to reduce waste. It’s also important to prevent trash from being thrown into recycling bins. When there are high enough amounts of trash contaminating recycling bins or dumpsters, none of it can be recycled. Second, many students have trouble differentiating between trash and recycling. This can be for a variety of reasons, including different acceptable recycling practices in different cities, students not knowing what types of materials are recyclable, or even confusion about which color bin recycling is supposed to go in. Regardless of the specific cause, my goal with this project was to encourage accurate recycling practices and make it easier for students to properly dispose of their waste. 

This pilot project was conducted in Marycrest because it is the location for summer and first-year housing. It also has a unique layout that allowed me to test several different styles of organization. The south half of Marycrest has two trash rooms and a common area with trash bins on each floor. The first proposed intervention was a relatively small change: ensure each trash room has gray trash bins and blue recycling bins. When I walked through the trash rooms early in the summer, most trash rooms did not have a recycling bin, so this was a top priority for me. The second intervention was to separate trash and recycling into different locations completely. As I mentioned before, the south half of Marycrest has two trash rooms very close to each other, so I dedicated one of those rooms to be for recycling only and the other for trash only. The final intervention utilizes the common area to make a “recycling hub.” This intervention let students put only trash in each trash room while directing them to take all their recycling to the bins in the common area. 

Marycrest recycling, 2025

Along with each change in organization, I worked with HSI’s graphic design summer fellow to develop trash and recycling signage. Each trash room and recycling hub in Marycrest had a large sign with examples of the types of items that should go in trash or recycling. The goal with this signage was to help students who were making mistakes because they simply weren’t sure which category their waste fell under. We also wanted students to see the signs and spend an extra second to be conscious about where they were taking their waste.

Early in the summer, I walked through all the trash rooms in Marycrest to see how effective the current system was before any changes were made. I looked to see how many blue recycling bins and gray trash bins each room had, as well as looking for the amount of contamination in each bin. What I found was that there was essentially no distinction between the types of materials found in trash and recycling bins. Items like aluminum cans, cardboard boxes and plastic bottles were in trash bins while bags full of trash, styrofoam and food were in recycling bins. Most likely, nothing in any of those bins was truly getting recycled. Not only that, but the bin colors were very inconsistent, with red and yellow bins being more common than the standard blue recycling bins. After seeing everything, I felt very confident that any of my proposed changes would have a positive impact on the existing recycling system.

Throughout the month of July, I went through every trash room and common area twice per week around 7:30 a.m. (before the trash was collected) to look in every bin and examine the amount of contamination. I would take a video of myself going through each bin, then go back and make a record of what each video showed. I used this information to determine which intervention type was the most effective at reducing cross contamination between trash and recycling. 

After the program was over, it was very clear that the most effective intervention was the recycling hub. When the recycling was moved to the common area, students who were willing to separate their trash and recycling were willing to walk a few extra steps to put them in the right place. This meant that, even though there was still some recycling that ended up in trash cans, I never found any non-recyclable items in the recycling hub. Based on the results of the pilot program, we were able to implement the recycling hub system in Marycrest starting in January 2025.

This was a really incredible experience for me. I was able to learn so much about the way people think about recycling from the perspective of students. I also had the opportunity to meet with a representative from Rumpke, the company that collects UD’s trash and recycling, who taught me a lot about the process of recycling and waste management from their perspective. I was able to work on a project that I was passionate about while having a very personal and positive impact on the UD community. I had an incredible time working at HSI last summer, and I loved being able to work on something so important.

To learn more about or apply for the Hanley Sustainability Institute’s Summer Fellow Program, visit our website. If students have any questions about what can be recycled further than the categories provided on recycling signage, they can check on Rumpke’s recycling services website

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