Student employees work at the center to keep the campus litter-free.

The employees are responsible for separating and sorting the material they find in the recycle barrels placed all over campus.

Western sophomore Dulcinea Rattet has worked at the Recycle Center since last year when she started as a laborer.

Rattet is now working as the educator for the center, helping Western students understand the importance of recycling and what materials are recyclable.

Every week, laborers take the center’s trucks, filled with empty barrels, to academic buildings, residence halls and food service buildings and replace all the full barrels.

The full barrels are brought to the AS Recycle Center and hand sorted into separate bins of wood, steel, aluminum, tin, plastic, glass, mixed paper, office paper and cardboard.

The laborers also take out any contaminants; coffee cups, sticker paper and milk cartons are just some of the non-recyclable material they find in the barrels.

One of Rattet’s biggest pet peeves is finding half-full coffee cups in the recycling because the cold liquid spills on her and the other laborers while sorting the recycling.

Rattet said coffee cups are not recyclable due to the wax film on the inside of the cup; they are compostable.

Western senior Emma Butterworth, the Recycling Center staff manager, has been working at the center since last fall. Butterworth said she enjoys the job because it is outside and she gets to help the campus stay litter-free.

The staff has found a lot of interesting things in the big blue barrels. Hair, Q-tips, pistachio shells, orange peels and even used condoms are just some of the strange things people have thrown in the barrels.

 “We have found wrappings from dildos and sex toys,” Butterworth said, laughing. “It’s always really funny to go through and pick up a cardboard box, and you’re just like ‘hmm, oh, that’s awesome.’”

Even with every puzzling item found by the staff, a treasure does turn up once in a while.

 “We also find really cool stuff, [such as] this sweatshirt that I’m wearing and an invisible horse that we’re going to put together,” Butterworth said.

The invisible horse is a model horse with a clear outer shell that displays the inner parts of the animal, used as a biology demonstration. It was left in good condition by the barrels in one of the academic buildings.

Butterworth said besides the residence halls, there is one building in particular that has not been recycling well.

 “The Communications Facility has been really bad lately,” Butterworth said. “There aren’t that many trash cans to try to decrease the amount of waste, but it’s in fact causing issues because the waste is now being put into the recycling.”

Butterworth said when a barrel is mostly trash with a small amount of paper, it’s not worth sorting because it’s a waste of time for the employees. They dump the barrel and the paper never gets recycled.

 Butterworth said it is hard for her to throw away recyclable material, but there isn’t enough staff or time to sort through every single piece if the barrels are so mixed up with trash.

The staff at the Recycling Center rarely receives a break from their duties, even working through dangerous weather conditions and finals week. The schedules are modified, but the staff keeps sorting.

Butterworth said move-out week is the worst day to pick up recycling.

 “It’s chaos,” she said. “We come in at five in the morning and go out and get cardboard from the dorms. Everybody is moving out of the dorms, so recycling is tripled.  Then on top of that, it’s finals and people are moving out for the summer.”

Western senior Keith Iverson is the Recycle Center’s operation manager. His duties are to keep the center running behind the scenes and make sure everything is ready to go for the laborers.

He has found things ranging from vomit to a crushed mouse and even a Playstation 2 that was in good shape during his experience at the Recycle Center.

 “Sometimes I will find a barrel where it is obvious that people are being lazy and treating it like a trash can,” he said.

Iverson said he wants the students and staff at Western to keep in mind that students just like them have to sort through each barrel by hand.

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