ASU Recycles makes plastic bottle ban easier for students

Throwing away plastic bottles will soon be illegal in North Carolina.

Beginning Oct. 1, state law will ban the disposal of rigid plastic containers, such as beverage bottles and laundry detergent containers, into landfills. The law defines rigid plastics as having a neck smaller than the body of the container.

Plastics take more than 100 years to break down in landfills, Marsha O. Story, recycling coordinator for the town of Boone, said. The toxin petroleum in plastic can then leech down into the town's soil and water streams.

“You're putting [the toxins] back in your body,” Story said. “It's a cycle that we want to eliminate.”

 The law serves to inspire better, healthier habits rather than to punish residents.

“We will not be going through people's trash,” Lisa G. Doty, Watauga County recycling coordinator, said. “The enforcement is more of an encouragement for people to recycle.”

Story said the law also aims to help businesses in North Carolina that are dependent on recycled plastic to make their products.

 "Plastic manufacturers and processors employ over 39,000 people in North Carolina that actually use the recycling materials," Doty said. “That's a good impetus for getting the recycling materials to these companies to keep these jobs in place."

For Appalachian State University students, the switch to regularly recycling plastic containers should be easy, Jennifer B. Maxwell, Appalachian’s resource conservation manager, said.

 Appalachian's campus recycling program, ASU Recycles, has implemented campus-wide waste reduction and recycling initiatives for nearly 20 years. The program recycled 54 tons of bottles and cans within the past year.

  “We have tried to make a huge effort to make bottle and can recycling available all over campus in the academic and administrative areas,” Maxwell said. Recycling receptacles are also provided in residence halls.

 “There is opportunity everywhere on campus for [students] to recycle plastic,” Maxwell said. “They just have to make the right choice.”

 In an effort to reduce waste on football game days, the program's members began the first Recycle at the Rock initiative last year. Volunteers distribute recyclable bags to fill with leftover plastic, glass, aluminum and steel. Tailgaters simply leave their full bags in the parking lot and Foothills Recycling of North Wilkesboro, N.C., recycles the materials for free.

Last year, the initiative saved over 8 tons of recycling from becoming waste in landfills.

 “For a first attempt, I think it went really well,” Maxwell said. The initiative is available again this year.

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