Campus recycling was limited throughout most of Tufts' history until Karen White (LA '91) and a few other students decided to establish an official recycling and waste management program for the university in 1990. So began Tufts Recycles!, according to Betsy Isenstein, the director of Facilities Technical Services.
Tufts Recycles! was run primarily by Tufts students, who worked to increase recycling rates at Tufts and bring all campuses to "zero-waste" status throughout the 1990s and 2000s, according to its website. Isenstein, the self-proclaimed “energy person” at Tufts, began to work with the students at Tufts Recycles! during its early days, helping to promote the initiative. Together, they worked to lay the groundwork for a strong recycling program at Tufts.
Today, however, recycling on all of Tufts' campuses is largely conducted by Facilities Services and the Office of Sustainability, with Tufts Recycles! student interns now mostly working on education and outreach as a result of ongoing structural and programmatic changes, according to sophomore Morgan Leppla, a current recycling intern.
Most of these changes to the program took place after Dawn Quirk —who was hired as the Waste Reduction Program Manager in July 2004 — left Tufts in November 2014. Quirk was the first and only administrator with a full-time position dedicated solely to recycling efforts at Tufts, according to Isenstein.
While she was originally responsible for overseeing recycling, Quirk said her job expanded to include managing the solid waste programs on all three campuses instead of focusing only on recycling. She also oversaw the projects and campaigns of student interns.
“I was blessed with amazing Tufts Recycles! interns who enabled [the program] to get so much done,” Quirk said.
According to a report compiled by Quirk in 2014, during her 10-year tenure at Tufts, the combined recycling rates for all three campuses grew by approximately 10 percent. Quirk said she also helped establish several new initiatives during her time at Tufts, including Tufts' partnership with GreenBean Recycle, a start-up based in Somerville that has developed a recycling machine. Freecycle boxes were also introduced to many of the dorms, and Tufts competed in Recyclemania, a national collegiate recycling tournament that takes place every spring.
Tufts' growing recycling program was recognized in 2012 by MassRecycle, according to Quirk. Additionally, Quirk and the Tufts Recycles! program received a silver recycling award at MassRecycle’s 17th Annual Recycling Awards Ceremony that same year.
According to Isenstein, no one was hired in the immediate period after Quirk left Tufts in 2014 to work for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Having knowledge of and experience with the recycling program at Tufts, Isenstein stepped up to work with students until Kate Doherty Bolivar was hired in December 2015 as a Supervisor in the Office of Facilities Services. In her role, she oversees Solid Waste and Recycling, C&W Services for all campuses and Pest Control and Grounds on the Medford campus, according to the Tufts Recycles website.
Prior to this role, Doherty said that she had been at Tufts for approximately four years, working as a Facilities Supervisor on the Boston campus and also working for one summer on the Grafton campus. According to Doherty, before she assumed the position there was minimal oversight of pest control at Tufts. In her new role, Doherty oversees many aspects of campus services at Tufts including pest control, rather than just solid waste and recycling, as Quirk had.
Since hiring Doherty, Facilities Services has partnered more closely with the Office of Sustainability to try to reach recycling goals.
“Prior to me here, we had not partnered with the [Office of Sustainability] that much, but now we are a true partner,” Doherty said. “I would say I'm almost a liaison between Facilities Services and the Office of Sustainability."
Still, each office retains distinct roles in terms of recycling efforts at Tufts. According to Doherty, the Office of Sustainability focuses more on communications and research regarding recycling at Tufts. Facilities Services, in turn, focuses on operational needs and manages payments and purchasing.
“I think both [bodies] think strategically, but we think strategically in different ways,” Doherty said.
Doherty explained that these structural changes have drastically reduced the presence of Tufts Recycles! because the offices have taken on many of the organization's former responsibilities.
“We are no longer really called Tufts Recycles!" she said. "It's really just recycling and waste management."
Ultimately, she believes that these changes have been beneficial.
“I think there is more of a focus. I don't know if we take it more seriously, but I think that there is a stronger focus to reach our sustainability goals,” Doherty said. “Now the management has shifted more from students, as when it started, to [being] managed internally within Facilities and more of a collaborative effort from management."
However, Doherty still has student interns as a part of the recycling program. Luke Rivers, a senior at Endicott College interning at Tufts for a semester, is the first co-op student to work for Doherty. Currently, Rivers is working almost entirely on educating the student body about Tufts' upcoming switch from a dual stream recycling program to a single stream program, in which glass, metal, plastics, paper and other recyclable materials are collected together.
“We have a lot of bins on campus already, so I’ve been going around taking inventory of every bin that we have so we can standardize everything to make it easier for the users to approach the bin and be like, ‘Oh, I know what this means,’” Rivers said.
Doherty said the transition to single-stream will officially take place in January 2017.
“Now you have two bins for dual stream, one for paper and cardboard and one for glass, metal and plastic," Doherty said. "Basically, one of those bins goes away and all of those materials go into one bin now."
According to Doherty, a single stream system is easier for users. She also explained that the shift to single stream is a reflection of where the recycling industry is headed. For example, other colleges have switched to a single stream recycling program, such as Yale University in 2012, according to a November 2012 article from the Yale University website.
However, there are some critics of the single-stream system, due to its potential inefficiency in processing recycled materials. According to a March 31, 2015 NPR article titled, “With 'Single Stream Recycling', Convenience Comes at Cost," the single-stream system can lead to more recyclable products ending up landfills, especially when contaminated products are put in recycling bins.
Despite this, Doherty maintained that it is still the best option for Tufts at this time.
“We've done a lot of research prior … I think we've done research for several several months about how it works at other universities, what universities are doing, what contributes to their success,” Doherty said.
The evolving cycle of recycling
