Recycling

White Paper Recycling

The campus-wide white paper recycling program currently involves over 100 buildings. Building occupants have individual recycling bins (blue 7-gallon) for their workstation. Bins are also in multi-user areas such as labs and computer rooms. Each building also has at least one larger centrally located collection bin (blue 50-gallon with wheels). Note: New this fall recycling has been added to the residence halls. Read more about how Recycling started in the Residence Halls.

Participation is voluntary and designed to make our campus community more environmentally conscious. Those who choose to participate simply sort their white paper to their individual bin. At their convenience, participants empty their individual bin into the large collection bins. To help promote recycling, each building has a recycling volunteer who serves as a liaison between the building occupants and the recycling office.

On the Tuesday schedule the custodial staff from Facilities Planning and Management (FP&M) or the designated building occupant takes the large bins to a designated location for pickup by our in-house recycler (FP&M Campus Services). Once the large bins are empty, the custodian or occupant returns them to the centralized locations within the building. Weekly pickup varies per building depending on the white paper volume (see collection schedule.) High volume buildings have weekly collection on Tuesdays. In low volume buildings, when the bins are full the custodian or building occupant notifies the recycling office to arrange for pick up on the next Tuesday collection day.

Currently we are recycling over ten tons of white paper per month (over 1800 tons to date). The recycling program saves the university refuse service costs. Each ton recycled also represents a diverted savings of $60, the current university disposal fee at the Ames Resource Recovery Plant.

The collected paper goes to International Paper in Des Moines. As per our current contract, we will receive payment from International per ton based on the official board market (post white ledger). From there, all material is sorted and mixed with like material and baled into marketable bales of various weights and shipped out to mills all over this country and several others according to fiber content.

At the consuming mill, the paper bales are repulped in a hydropulper, which completely obliterates the material into oatmeal-like slurry. New material is created from this slush.

Using wastepaper to make new paper uses 60% less energy, produces less air and water pollutants, and consumes 50% less water. Each ton of paper recycled saves about 17 trees, 2.5 barrels of oil, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space.

White Paper Acceptable / Unacceptable
Acceptable White Paper Computer paper Printer/copier/fax paper White tablet paper Color printed material Card stock White envelopes (no plastic window or labels) Staples OK - do not have to remove To test paper, tear and if inside is white, OK to recycle in blue bins	Unacceptable Colored or off-white paper Ground wood paper (green bar) Paper ream wrappers Address labels/stickers Manila folders / cardboard Carbon paper / NCR paper Newspaper / newsprint Magazines / slick paper Phone books Blueprints Glue binding / tape Food-related paper Plastic of any kind Paper clips

Contact the Recycling Coordinator (recycling@iastate.edu) at 294-0692 if you have any questions about white paper recycling.

Visit our Request Form to have your white paper picked up.