Madeline Owens
Lantern Staff
The city of El Dorado has made the decision to terminate recycling services because of finances and the unavailability to dispose of recycled materials.
Butler Community College will no longer have the choice to use recycling bins because of this change. All recycling bins, with the exception of the one located in the 1500 building, have already been taken off campus.
“Butler has collected recycling and delivered these products to the city of El Dorado for disposal for several years,” Assistant Director of Facilities Management Ireland Turner said. “Since the city has closed the recycling center, Butler has no economical way to dispose of recycling products.”
Although recycling has had proven benefits towards the community, it has become expensive and hard to manage.
“The city started recycling about 25 years ago,” El Dorado City Manager David Dillner said. “Recycling services were provided through the city of El Dorado. The recycling market has had issues in terms of finances. The main issue being China was receiving dirty recyclables from other countries.”
Recycling can only go so far if citizens aren’t following the rules of cleaning out their recyclable materials before disposing of them.
“We are currently in an environmental crisis, so hearing that we are losing recycling was not a good thing in my opinion,” sophomore Cora Mertens said.
The facilities department is aware that the Butler community will most likely have some negative feedback towards the end of recycling, but another thing to consider is that recycling services could eventually come back if people started to change thew way they recycle.
“It costs extra money to clean out those materials,” Dillner said. “China has been the leading country in the market for taking in recyclables from multiple countries.”
Recently, however, China decided it was too expensive to just accept recyclable materials, especially since they needed to be cleaned out most of the time for lower costs.
This made prices in the United States grow dramatically over the years.
The loss of recycling services might be very disappointing to some faculty and students; however, it is important to keep in mind that there are ways to contribute to the planet’s well being other than recycling.
The saying, “reduce, reuse and recycle” means to reduce your waste from the beginning.
Swapping plastic straws and bags for reusable or biodegradable options have become a popular trend in the country. Local stores in El Dorado sell homemade organic soaps and candles that are easily biodegradable and made with safer alternative ingredients.
Small changes can make a bigger difference for the planet. Small changes such as cleaning out the recyclable products we use can lead to recycling services making a return.
Even though recycling is a popular way of expressing a green thumb, students and faculty can get creative with other methods of reducing their carbon footprints.