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-1072896682Cleanlink News 12/8/2009
Recycle: Keep Campuses Clean
As seen in the Central Florida Future.
It’s everywhere. On containers, trash bins, mysterious white trucks that roam University of Centeral Florida (UCF) at night. It’s in offices, dorms, on the Web, in the Student Union. It’s the UCF Recycles logo. Students, faculty and guests see the logo across campus. However, very few get to see what’s behind this omnipresent reminder of UCF’s commitment to sustainability.
Brian Wormwood, assistant director of housekeeping & recycling services, knows exactly what happens to our beloved water bottles once thrust into the realm of the arrowed triangle. The recycling czar heads a team of four groundskeepers, who work with Senior Superintendent of Maintenance Don Atkinson to coordinate the efforts of groundskeepers who work solely on the recycling program with those who are involved on a less regular basis.
UCF Recycles’ headquarters is located in the Physical Plant (recently renamed Facilities and Safety) — a large, gray, concrete building tucked away at the southernmost tip of campus next to the UCF Police Department. The unassuming structure is home to everything from administrative offices to a mechanic repair shop and encompasses a large warehouse and, of course, UCF’s recycling center. It is here that recyclables are brought, transported in the back of those big white trucks.
Once the merchandise arrives, the sorting begins. Aluminum cans are dumped into a 4-foot-deep holding bay, where they remain until enough cans accumulate to be compacted into bails. Plastics and cardboard are also compacted into bails once enough material accumulates. Aluminum cans and cardboard were some of the first things recycled at UCF, “back in the early ’90s, before my time here,” Wormwood said. Since then, when UCF’s recycling program was still known as KnightCycle, many more materials have been added to the recycling portfolio.
Besides plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard, UCF currently recycles shrink wrap, scrap metal, wooden pallets, paper and even old refrigerators, according to Wormwood.
Click here to continue reading, as well as learn what happens once all this recycled material is collected.
