In my pathway I want to explore things that Utah Valley University is doing to encourage Community Engaged Learning and Research. I am a transfer student who started college a little later in life, and one of the many reasons I stay at UVU is because of all the hands-on engaged learning opportunities on campus. Being able to focus my research on UVU has been enlightening.
This month the main question I had to drive my post was: Is recycling real? I know you might be thinking a lot of things when I ask that question, the main one being: what does that have to do with Community Engaged Learning?
Throughout my posts, I hope that you gain insights into how students who engage with their community care more about their community. Recycling became a rabbit hole for me, and in falling down, I learned that the lack of community engagement has led to a very common narrative: recycling isn’t real or meaningful.
This section summarizes the student’s data-gathering process and key findings from survey, interview, or other inquiry methods.
When I started my pathway post in January, I wanted to know three things. One, how many people think that recycling is a scam? Two, is it a scam? And three, where do we go from here? If you’re thinking to yourself, “how could recycling be fake?” You’re not alone, but if you’re thinking, “of course it's fake!” You definitely have more company. I asked 40 people (students, faculty, staff of community partners) their CELR experience related to recycling, their thoughts behind recycling, and their perceived actions (and UVU’s actions) towards recycling.
60-62% of participants think that recycling is an effective way to reduce waste and create impact on the environment. However, only 20% of participants say they almost always recycle when they can. How can you believe that something works, and yet, not do it? While it’s true that 60-62% believe that recycling is meaningful, only 25% of them think our items actually get recycled. So they don’t recycle. Many think, “why would I?” If I throw this Dr. Pepper can in the blue bin and it ends up in the same pile as the banna peel in the black bin, why would I go hunting around for a blue bin? Why does it matter? I can’t answer that question with my data, but I do have an answer for the question: why do people think that recycling doesn't matter?
When asked “Have you participated in a class, project, or event related to recycling?” 78% of people said no. While of course, there are probably many other reasons why people don’t think recycling is real, like misinformation or mislabeling products, we can’t overlook the fact that people don’t engage with recycling the same way they engage with other social issues. In my very first survey, 55% of participants said they engaged with CELR in the past and 100% reported it made an impact on their lives. In November, 40% of students said they engaged with CELR related to environmental issues and all of them said it made them feel more responsible for the environment. If we can agree that students feel an impact on their lives, and a sense of accountability after they engage with CELR, then it’s not a difficult pill to swallow to suggest that our recycling crisis is also a community engagement crisis.
This section shares insights from a community partner interview, connecting their perspective to the Pathway theme.
I talked to many people about recycling in January, some formally, and some informally. Some people I can’t quote without getting them in trouble and some were very eager to be quoted. It’s important to know that this whole rabbit hole was started because of my internship with UVU. I am an intern for a cabinet member in UVU’s administration, and one of the other interns asked for help in a recycling project they were working on. In case you didn’t know, as of December of last year, UVU doesn’t currently have a recycling director or sustainability outreach coordinator. My other intern was bothered by this and wanted to start a plan to get UVU to recycle more. To my surprise, UVU doesn’t really recycle. They have the bins and the signs and their "sustainability initiative” wall, but what you don’t see is their small team of 4, their tiny baler for cardboard and aluminum, no space to store recyclable materials, no support from administration, and even less of a budget. So my interviews started with other universities, trying to gauge what they do and how they do it.
Bill has been the director of BYU recycling since 1999 (before I was born. I'm so sorry.) He’s also the most knowledgeable person on recycling in the world. Bill talked to us on the phone for over an hour about the struggles of recycling at a University level and then showed us around his recycling facility giving us numbers, facts, and advice. I compared that interview to my informal conversation with a source from UVU, who was very open to me with a recycling plan and had answers to my logistics questions. Lastly, I talked to Todd who is the director of sustainability for the city of Lehi. While a city and a university definitely don’t function the same way, I think learning how a city can recycle is very important to answering my question, “Is recycling a scam?”
I brought Todd my findings from my data collection and he really emphasized for me that recycling isn’t a hoax. What it is, is a complex system that’s shaped by social, economic, and environmental factors. A great part of talking with Todd was he brought up education being the most effective tool. Lehi City does a lot of K-12 programming with kids so they can learn about sustainability and how recycling works from a young age. They also provide “recycling mythbusters” on their city website, and are transparent with their recycling program. He did introduce me to the economic value of recycling. While I wish we lived in a world where people recycled purely because it’s the right thing to do, there’s actually a lot of money to be made. Todd highlighted for me that financial incentives play a major role in municipal recycling efforts, citing how Lehi’s low contamination rates have generated significant rebates for the city. How does Lehi get low contamination rates? I’m so glad you asked. Lehi uses AI technology in their recycling trucks to see if someone put trash in their recycling bins. If they do, they get a warning - three warnings and the city takes away their recycling can. Another way that they use education to enact change. Overall, the interview revealed that recycling succeeds when it’s not treated as an isolated action, but as an ongoing cycle of education, accountability, and cultural change.
The claim that UVU doesn’t recycle, isn’t one I make lightly. My source was kind of enough to shed some light on how the UVU recycling experience works. Inside of custodial services you have 4 employees that care enough to collect the recycling bins on top of the other trash cans they are required to collect. They put it in the recycling bins outside and UVU pays a company to collect it, sort it, and recycle it. There’s a separate deal that UVU has with the cafeteria. All the uncontaminated cardboard gets baled and then put into storage to wait for cardboard prices to be high enough to sell. Then, UVU sells the cardboard and everyone is happy. This sounds like a great process. Uou might even say “Abigail! They are recycling.”
Here’s the thing. The company that UVU pays to collect, sort, and recycle? They won’t tell UVU how much they’re recycling, what the contamination rates are, or really any information regarding the “recyclable” materials that UVU sells to them. The conspiracy theory is that they don’t recycle. They just collect our materials and our money and then throw it away in the landfill. Again, I hear you, “But Abigail! The food court! They’re recycling” Here’s the other thing, UVU has one baler, no space to store the cardboard bales, and it takes a lot of bales to sell. It takes about 15 - 20 bales to make a sale. By the time we get enough bales to sell, they get ruined by the weather (we can only store them outside). If by some miracle they didn’t, we have to play the holding game to get the best price possible. All of this means, we probably aren’t recycling.
This section summarizes readings and research related to a relevant topic within the student’s Pathway and connects them to larger patterns or themes.
I am a firm believer in community-engaged learning and its effectiveness is making change all around us. CELR experiences can provide effective tools for improving campus structures. If students partner with universities, real needs are revealed and it leads to sustainable, long-term solutions. I read this study about a student-led service learning project at Valparaiso University. The students wanted to redo a 150-year-old steel bridge that they had on their campus. The engineering students, supported by faculty, used their academic knowledge, hands-on construction skills, and community engagement to save their beloved bridge.
While there was a physical outcome, they installed their new bridge, the project also produced education benefits. The reflections that the students wrote showed the increased understanding of engineering concepts, developed team work and leadership skills. Students reported that this CELR experience connected the theory with the real-world and many got internships and post-grad jobs because of this opportunity. On top of that, faculty reported to the researchers that students had a higher motivation to complete their work and the outcomes that they saw wouldn’t be possible inside a traditional classroom setting.
This service-learning model shows how when students lead projects that are transparent and collaborative it can produce lasting and accountable campus infrastructure improvements. In the case for Valparaiso University, students were deeply involved in the planning, implementation, oversight, and the evaluation. They had clear documentation of outcomes and cooperated with the university. In contrast, Utah Valley University’s recycling system lacks transparency, accountability, and meaningful student involvement. They have infrastructure limitations: not enough storage space, not enough staff, and no funding to mend these issues. There’s no communication between UVU and their contractor, and there’s low motivation from students to act on these problems. All of these problems reduce the likelihood that our recycling program actually diverts trash from landfills.
In my dream world, a community-engaged learning and research project, like the student bridge project, could lead to healing these problems. Students could audit waste streams, design storage spaces and processing systems, and they could collaborate across administration, colleges, and staff to create recycling outcomes. Without the CELR framework, I find that recycling efforts become symbolic and not functional.
This section highlights helpful tools or guides that support real-world application of the Pathway.
With all of this talk about failings of community-engaged learning and resources, I wanted to talk about ways I think we can approach uses of CELR. A great place to start for me was the EPA website. https://cfpub.epa.gov/wizards/recyclingtoolkit/ This site has a tool kit search feature, you can break down what goals you have, who your audience is, materials you want to use, and what resources you need. The search then matches you with different resources (infographics, videos, activities, etc) that can help you. I really enjoyed this infographic and information about food waste. It breaks down the best way to prevent food waste, and what to do with excess waste. I also had never heard of Anaerobic Digestion, so it was great to learn about.
The EPA website has been my best friend recently, but I wanted to share one link from them as well. I enjoy coming across different names for community-engaged learning. EPA has a program called Social Marketing. Their idea is that some people will enact change if they learn about it, and some people will only change if the law forces them. But most people will enact change while learning together. While it sounds like CELR they also come from new angles. They have a free course online where they walk you through how they used it for food waste and recycling and then they show you how to create your own social marketing campaign. I found it really interesting, and thought I would share it! https://www.epa.gov/circulareconomy/creating-messages-drive-behavior-change#whatis
This section reflects on a firsthand or immersive experience related to the Pathway topic.
My conversation and experience with Bill from BYU was a stark contrast from my conversation and experience at UVU. BYU is efficient and robust when it comes to recycling, however, their campus attitude is pretty similar to UVU’s. According to Bill, people just don’t like recycling. He called recycling the ugly duckling of environmentalism, and said people just don’t engage with it in the same way that they engage with other sustainability efforts. Bill told us a story where BYU had a large event and they were passing out plastic bottles of orange juice. There was a recycling bin right next to the trash bin and Bill said that at least half the people threw away their plastic bottles rather than recycle them. He didn’t really have an answer to why that is, rather than “I don’t think people care enough to recycle.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think people care. I just think people don’t trust it or don’t understand it. People are so far removed from their trash that it’s easy to forget that it has to go somewhere. That’s one of the reasons I loved touring BYU’s recycling facility, I remembered just how much I throw away. Bill walked us around the site, it was huge. They had massive compost, sand, dirt and soil piles. Sheds to store their bales of cardboard, plastic, paper, and aluminum. BYU has their own recycling trucks, sorting machines, giant baler, and paper shredders. Their program is funded, supported and cared for, and yet, BYU students, faculty, and staff don’t recycle.
So while the UVU non-belivers can feel vindicated, the BYU non-belivers can’t. Recycling is complex, and I didn’t fully understand what it looked like until I met with Bill. After BYU collects, sorts and bales all themselves, they sell it. Cardboard, plastic, aluminum, paper and other materials can be commodities. Cardboard for example gets repulped and turned into cardboard again for other boxes or packing materials. The same happens with paper. Plastic is trickier; it gets melted down and reformed, which makes the plastic weaker and less likely to be used a third time. It’s also not as profitable as cardboard or paper. Hank Green has a great video on this, if you’re interested. So when I say that BYU is recycling, the truth is, they are selling their trash to someone who wants to turn it into something else. There actually is money in this! Bill said that cardboard usually sells for 50 dollars a ton and they produce 2000 tons on average. That’s 100,000 dollars a year, just for cardboard. Paper is double the price.
I’ll admit. I am bad at recycling. It’s hard to know what you can and can’t recycle, it’s scary and overwhelming, and what if I go through all this effort to educate myself and it all ends up in the exact same place? That was before these interviews and experiences. Seeing the recycling first-hand, watching people sort trash, seeing just how much recycled waste happens on one college campus in one month, shifted how I felt. This is what community-engaged learning and research is supposed to do. CELR is supposed to challenge our preconceived notions of systems and problems and push us to new ideas.
If more people toured Waste Management in Salt Lake City, if more people called their local city officials, and if more people were engaged in the issue of recycling, I don’t think the narrative of “it’s not real” would exist, and in situations like at UVU we would be better equipped to address and solve the issue. Sometimes, without community engagement we don’t even know what questions to ask.
This section offers closing reflections and invites readers to consider how they can apply the insights in their own lives and communities.
Through my data collection I answered my question of how many people think recycling
is a scam. Then I talked to people and experienced recycling first hand to find out
if it even was a scam. Now I’m left with this gray area. Is it a scam? I guess you'll
have to answer that for yourself. I can say that I now have more faith in the recycling
idea than I did before. I was so far removed from it I didn’t even have an idea of
what recycling looked like. Now that I do, I think there is a reason to recycle my
items. That being said, it’s not the solution. Todd from Lehi City talked about this
with me. Recycling should be a last resort. We need to consume less; that’s step one.
Stop buying single use plastic, try buying things in bulk with your glass jars, or
use bar soap instead of the plastic containers, carry around a fork in your bag. If
you have to buy something, find another use for it after you’re done. I have such
a hard time throwing away glass, so I have so many old pickle jars full of flowers,
cool rocks, or pens and pencils. If all else fails, recycle it. Learn can and can’t
be recycled, (don’t put your pizza boxes or plastic bags in the recycling bin) and
recycle. The worst that can happen is it goes to the landfill with everything else.
The best that can happen is that your items live a second life and you helped prevent
landfills from taking over the world.
So my call to action isn't something earth shattering or new. In fact Jack Johnson says it better in his song The 3 R’s. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
