by LeAnn Beasley

To a child, things just happen. A broken car is taken to a shop and comes back all better. A restaurant is full of waiters who magically bring out a dish of exactly what you want to eat, and a trash can is a black hole where unwanted material disappears.

As it turns out, the black hole has always been the city dump, but the more material that is recycled the less there trash there will be in land fills.

Recycling at Texas Lutheran University

The students of TLU saw the importance of recycling and did something about it.

According to Lauren Neely, president of the student environmental group EnAct, the leadership class at TLU decided to start a recycling program because at that time Seguin only recycled aluminum cans.

“The program began with the Trash Tromp in March of 2006 and was open to the public starting in April of 2006,” Neely said.

The Trash Tromp is an event in which the student and faculty at TLU compete to collect the most recyclable material.

According to Neely, the recycling program at TLU is operated by EnAct and the students are responsible for maintenance and costs.

“We wouldn’t have been able to afford it if it weren’t for the very generous donation of $5,000 by CMC steel,” Neely said.
           
EnAct pays Green Guy Recycling in San Marcos to pick up the materials every six to eight weeks, which cost about $75 each pick-up, Neely said.

According to Neely, EnAct promotes recycling on campus through flyers and will soon place more recycling bins on campus.

“I can only hope that EnAct grows,” Neely said.

Recycling in the city of Seguin

The city of Seguin has followed in the university’s footsteps and has begun a recycling program.

“We wanted to try out the central point initially and see how it worked and maybe long term we could start looking at curbside,” Rick Cortes, assistant city manager, said.

According to Cortes, the city currently has two recycling drop off locations. Wal-Mart has a drop off location on Saturday mornings from 8 a.m. until noon and the other is on Nelda Street and is open every day.

“It seems like the program is really taking off and there are people continuing to provide recyclable materials,” Cortes said.

Cortes said central point recycling is a good way to introduce recycling to the city because there is no cost to citizens.

“We were trying to keep it as low cost to the citizens as possible and still allow them to recycle,” Cortez said.

Currently IESI provides the recycling containers and ships the material to Vista Fibers in San Antonio on the weekends. They are committed to the program, Cortez said.

“It is a program we couldn’t have if we didn’t have the partnerships with IESI and Wal-Mart,” Cortes said.

According to Cortes, Wal-Mart encourages recycling and the company recycles a lot of cardboard.

“Here in Seguin, Wal-Mart has been a great corporate citizen,” Cortes said.

Wal-Mart also provides an incentive for recycling in Seguin. The company rewards one person each week with a $50 gift card for dropping of materials at the recycle bins, Cortez said.

Recycling is also quick because of a new process at the recycling centers.

“They have single string recycling where you put everything recyclable into one container and then they sort it at Vista Fibers,” Cortez said.

Material is sent to be sorted at Vista Fibers

Vista Fibers Recycling Center in San Antonio sort recyclable material from about 20 to 60 city trucks from the San Antonio area everyday, Zachary Walter, Vista Fibers account executive, said.

It may seem impossible to separate all recyclable material but Vista Fibers has a steady process to work through.

The process begins by fluffing all the mixed materials that had been compacted together by the trucks so that it can be separated easily, Walter said.

The mixed recyclables are poured into the Bollegraaf recycling machinery that pulls the materials up onto a conveyer belt where workers pull out contaminants such as garden hoses and large bags that could possibly hurt the machinery, Walters said.

According to Walter, after contaminants are removed the material is sorted by a series of bars that have rubber stars attached to them. These stars cause heavy materials such as tin and aluminum to fall and push light materials like paper and plastics to the top.

The next step in the sorting process is the sorting of plastics which is currently done by hand.

“We are trying to grow with technology,” Walter said. Vista Fibers is trying to get a new process that allows for plastic to be machine sorted by shooting a beam into the plastic that will measure its thickness.

After materials are sorted, everything gets baled, graded, tagged and shipped out to different recycling plants, Walter said.

Walter explained that recycling paper is important to the environment to save trees and to use less landfill space.

For every ton of paper that is recycled, about 17 trees that are 25 to 28 years old are saved, Walter said.

The process of recycling papers begins by soaking the paper to be able put the small fibers back into a new sheet of paper, and soap is used to remove ink which rises to the surface, Walter said.

Aluminum is the highest valued material and is 100 percent recyclable, Walter said.

At the end of the process, leftover material is baled and reprocessed on slower days to create the smallest about of waste possible, Walter said.

The recycling process has begun for the city of Seguin and with no cost to its citizens, Cortes said.

Since the program has been successful so far, there is the possibility of expansion in future years perhaps to the extent of curbside like the surrounding cities in the area.

July 2007