According to Jerry Kohn, assistant director of Facilities Services, the single biggest problem Marquette faces in its recycling efforts is students simply not disposing of these types of materials properly.,”Stop. Do you know where to put that empty bottle of water on your desk? What about those 20 pages of lecture notes you know you'll never read?

According to Jerry Kohn, assistant director of Facilities Services, the single biggest problem Marquette faces in its recycling efforts is students simply not disposing of these types of materials properly. This not only includes the obvious offenses such as throwing garbage in a recycling bin, but also forgetting that classroom bins are "Paper Only" and disposing of bottles and cans in those locations anyway.

Although recycling is available in every building on campus, Kohn said many students often do not take the time to throw away their garbage in appropriate containers.

"There are no recycling police," Kohn said. "Unfortunately, if the recycling is contaminated, (that container) all has to go out as trash."

Marquette currently recycles about 20 percent of its overall waste, a number that has remained fairly stagnant over the past five years, Kohn said. This percentage falls somewhere in the middle when compared with other universities. Recent leaders in the recycling race include Harvard University, which recently won the 2007 American Forest and Paper Association Recycling Award for recycling 44 percent of its refuse in 2006.

Recycling also has a significant benefit beyond being friendly to Mother Earth.

"There is a definite cost savings related to higher amounts of recycling," Kohn said. "It costs three times more to haul a load of trash than it does to haul a load of recyclables."

And the administration is not the only facet of the university that recognizes the growing need for increased environmental awareness. Sodexho, Marquette's foodservice provider, has also been working to find creative ways to reduce waste.

"You may notice that in the residence halls, we use very few disposable items," said Ken Medendorp, director of operations for university dining service.

Medendorp said the only significant disposal items used in the dining halls are napkins.

Medendorp added that since the dining halls serve more than one million meals each year, this is an enormous contribution.

"This type of program is very unusual and very exciting for a larger university to have," Medendorp said.

Other aspects of Sodexho's environmental sustainability campaign include limiting portion sizes to avoid wasting food and partnering with the Campus Kitchens Program, which uses leftover food from the dining halls to provide almost 400 meals each week to community centers and organizations.

According to Toby Peters, associate vice president for administration, Marquette also participates in a variety of other, less obvious, forms of recycling.

The university works with a number of auxiliary partners that strive to improve Marquette's environmental sustainability, Peters said.

Follett College Stores, with which BookMarq is affiliated, contribute by encouraging students to recycle their textbooks by reselling them.

Stone Creek Coffee, which is used in all Brews on campus, offers discounts to customers who reuse there reseal able coffee bags.

Hewlett Packard works with Marquette to properly recycle computers, some of which are then donated to community organizations and schools in Milwaukee, Peters said.

Although the university has made many efforts to improve its environmental sustainability, Peters said the biggest remaining challenge is continuing to change people's behaviors.

"Students are the largest constituents of the university community, and it is really up to them, as the end user, to make a conscious effort," Peters said. "At this point, it's not about what Marquette can do, but what the students can."

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