Two employees of the Millennium Lab at the McCombs School of Business claim that the school’s custodial staff does not properly dispose of the building’s recycling.
Accounting sophomore Karen Merchant and economics junior Bhavik Patel said they saw a janitor throw the contents of different recycling bins into the same trash receptacle.
“McCombs is giving false advertisements with multiple recycle bins,” Merchant said. “It is the school’s responsibility to set an example for its students and make a difference in the Austin community.”
Laurie Lentz, facilities services spokeswoman, said the McCombs school properly disposes of its recycling when possible. If one person throws trash in a recycling bin, however, none of it can be safely recycled, she said.
“With roughly 300 custodial staff and more than 18,000 paper recycling containers on the main and Pickle campuses, staff don’t have time to pick trash out of bins,” Lentz said.
Lentz said there is some confusion on campus on which paper products are actually recyclable. Napkins, tissue paper and anything with food residue on it will contaminate a whole recycled paper container.
Merchant and Patel suspected the recycling wasn’t being properly disposed of because it wasn’t kept separate in the sorting process.
“We have recently discovered the janitors are told not to bother with recycling, and they simply throw away the items from the recycling bin into the trash can to save time from searching for any possible trash that should not belong in those bins,” Merchant said in an e-mail to The Daily Texan.
Nellie Cano, assistant building attendant leader, said officials train every custodian on campus to use the same procedure when collecting trash and recycling.
“If one piece of trash gets mixed in with any of the recycling, the whole batch is no good,” she said. “We tell the custodians not to sift through all the trash because we want to avoid accidents.”
Cano said it is possible to mix all of the recycling and separate it out later.
“But all the staff in every building is trained to keep the recycling separate, and it stays separate when it is deposited in the bins outside,” she said.
After depositing recycling into the large bin outside of the building, the University’s custodians no longer have control over it.
“Facilities Services recycling crews pick up the paper from large outdoor bins and deliver to Balcones recycling,” Lentz said. “Austin Task picks up sensitive papers for shredding.”
Additional reporting by Amy Bingham
