Each building on campus has recycling bins. In residence halls, these are tall blue bins or green square bins. At any time, you can contact Facilities and ask for a personal bin to keep in your room that you can empty into a nearby communal recycling bin, or contact us for help locating a bin or getting a new one for your residence.
Trash
In all buildings on campus, including Main Street houses, trash bins are grey. Our waste is picked up by our waste hauler, incinerated, and the energy generated is used for electricity.
How We’re Reducing Waste
We work to reduce waste on a number of fronts, including purchasing less and reducing food waste. Two of our favorite ways to keep items from being trashed are our Sustainable Move-In and Sustainable Move-Out programs!
Frequently Asked Questions about Recycling and Waste
What is considered recyclable is highly dependent on what kind of materials the local recycling center cansort through.So,whatcan be placed in the recycling binand processed by one recycling center,maybe different than what another recycling center can accept. For example:Some companiescannottake certain materials likeplastic bags (in fact, most recycling centerscannottake flexibleplasticpackaging), but at Ursinus, our local recycling center is able to handle that material.
Yes! Last year we recycled 50 tons of material. This informationisgiven to us by the recycling center that weighs and separates our recycling stream. As a community, it is important for us to only place items that we know can be recycled intothe recyclingbins
A company comes to haul away our trash. The trash is then transported to a waste to energy plant that is located about 40 minutes away from campus. The waste to energy incinerates the trash. The heat that is created becomes steam, which is used to turn a turbine and generate electricity.
A company comes to haul away our recycling. The recycling is then transported to a recycling sorting center that is located about 45 minutes away from campus. The recycling center sorts throughall ofthe items and collects them in large quantities so they can be transported tomanufacturersand be remade into another product.
Ursinus College works withJ. P. Mascaro and Sonsas the company to transport our waste and recycling to their proper locations. They weigh our waste andrecyclingtons andsendsthat information to us
These items should be placed in the trash bin. Any pizza boxes that have grease (or cheese) stains on them will not be recycled at the local recycling center. A clean, non-stained pizza box can be recycled. (It is rare that a used pizza box will not have grease stains on it.) For paper cups and similar take out items, they usually have a wax-like coating on them so that the food does not leach/leak through the paper. This coating makes it difficult for the paper item to be recycled into another material.
Feel free to print out these flyers to help you know what is recyclable on campus!
