GVSU students participate in recycle mania

Photo courtesy of Grand Valley State University

Written by: Sasha Butkovich
Edited by: Chelcee Johns

Tori Guerrini is a stealth recycler. This isn’t to say that she dresses in black, dons a ski mask and separates plastics from glass by moonlight. It simply means that she may bend a rule or two in the name of sustainability.

Guerrini keeps her recyclables in boxes in her dining room: paper and cardboard in one box, and glass, plastic and metal in the others.

When the boxes are full, she drives the recyclables to the Allendale campus of Grand Valley State University and deposits them in the designated receptacle near Laker Village Apartments.

All this because the apartment complex where she lives doesn’t offer recycling service. Guerrini is also unintentionally helping the university in the RecycleMania contest.


RecycleMania is a competition lasting 10 weeks where participating colleges and universities promote waste reduction activities on campus.

Photo Courtesy of Recyclemania.org

The schools measure and report their recycling and trash data and are ranked based on these results.
GVSU participated in RecycleMania for the first time last year, and the results on the event’s website show that the school is already outdoing itself only weeks into this year’s competition.

Guerrini is not the only one helping to boost the university’s numbers. The natural resource management major and member of the Student Environmental Coalition said she knows plenty of people who do the same thing.

“I view recycling as a simple way for many to take a part in the care of our future,” Guerrini said. “Recycling helps reduce deforestation rates and the need to mine our natural resources that are already showing signs of dwindling.”

Steve Leeser, operations supervisor of facilities services, discouraged Guerrini’s brand of stealth recycling. Leeser said GVSU pays $100 every time the waste management company picks up that container alone.

He said when students living off-campus bring their recyclables to campus, they’re basically being subsidized by the university. As it is, Leeser said that recycling is not a money saver for the university in the big picture.

“It’s funded through the facilities services budget,” Leeser said, “but we do save money on items going to the landfill.”
GVSU has to pay to have trash taken to the landfill. Of course, there are also costs involved with recycling.

“We don’t do it because it’s a money thing,” Leeser said, “We do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Over the years, there has been an increase in recycling on GVSU campuses. Interest in recycling has also grown, which brought RecycleMania to the university.

Leeser organized the event at GVSU, but he said Student Senate, the Sustainability Office, Housing and Food Services all had a hand in RecycleMania.

But if he doesn’t want students living off-campus to use the on-campus facilities, then what’s a recycler to do?


For those who live in the city of Grand Rapids, curb-side recycling service is free. For the many students and residents of Allendale however, the process isn’t so simple.

In Ottawa County, people have to drop off household recycling at one of the four Resource Recovery Service Centers in the county. There is a $40 annual membership fee to do this.
Scott Schroeder from Ottawa County Environmental Health said this fee covers the cost of transportation to ship the recycling to the plants and rent for the 30-yard containers used to store the recyclables at the centers.

Leeser said he would encourage students to contact the owners of apartment complexes and ask for them to supply recycling service.

The management at Country Place Apartments, where Guerrini lives, told her they tried providing the service before but the residents didn’t use it. Those students who do want to recycle will more likely opt for a short-term solution, like stealth recycling.

Guerrini tosses two black garbage bags full of recyclables into the cab of her blue pickup truck and starts the engine. She drives to campus and pulls into the parking lot in front of Laker Village Apartments. For Guerrini, the economics isn’t the issue at hand.

“If recycling is so easy, and beneficial to our environment, is it not our duty to help save the planet that we hold so dear?” she asked. “Without steps toward sustainability, humans are predisposed to extinction.”