Plastic Recycling at Penn State University
Penn State University is home to nearly 76,000 undergraduate students among 20 different campuses. The largest and most notable campus is located in University Park, PA, with over 40,000 undergraduates. Penn State’s University Park campus generates nearly 18,000 tons of solid waste each year, only 58% of which was recycled [3].
Penn State’s Office of Physical Plant (OPP) collects seven types of recyclable material: paper, plastic, miscellaneous plastics, metal, glass, old corrugated containers (OCC), and compost. The recovery rate for plastics is about 75% and 50% for miscellaneous plastics [3]. The recovery rate measures how much material is recycled rather than discarded as refuse and this metric is dependent upon two key factors:
- The volume of people recycling material
- The extent to which these materials are being properly recycled.
When materials are not recycled properly, the purity rate decreases and Penn State incurs contamination fees from the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority (CCRRA). The purity rate for plastics ranges from 60 to 80 percent, while only 40 to 70 percent for miscellaneous plastics [3].
While Penn State’s recovery rates for plastic and miscellaneous plastics are higher than the national average, there is much room for improvement. The first step towards refining Penn State’s recycling is to examine the University’s current recycling practices and then identify the problems with these practices. Once the causes of these problems are investigated, only then can effective solutions be proposed.