Karyn Kaplan, has been Recycling Program Manager at the University of Oregon in Eugene for seven years. As a student, she was one of the founders of the program, which began as a grassroots action group at the Survival Center. The University has been cited in the National Wildlife Federation's publication, Eco-academia: Campus Environmental Stewardship at the Turn of the 21st Century, as one of the leaders in university recycling.

I think all of us agree and support the idea that recycling is just one step back from the garbage can. It's almost like a band-aid. Because the amount of garbage that people are producing is going up, consumption is really the problem.

There's no "life cost" accounting -- what is a tree really worth? A tree is a really energy-intensive thing to grow. It takes a long time and a tremendous amount of the earth's love and grace and beauty to produce anything like that. The amount of energy -- financial, physical, whatever -- needed to gather that resource is phenomenal and it's way beyond what it offers us in terms of providing us with a piece of paper that someone writes one line on, then throws it into the trash.

In the seven years of this university recycling program, we've increased our recycled waste by 400%. We started out with 16 tons and now we're up to 70 tons a month. I'd say we've recycled a total of about a thousand tons last year, which is about 40% of our waste. And out of that thousand tons, three-quarters was paper, which is totally reducible and reusable.

We followed the paper chase all over the place. One of the first things we did was to start recycling -- and then buying lots of recycled papers. We try to promote the use of recycled paper so that there's a market for what we collect. Also, we've been doing direct hit programs to get people to reduce the amount of paper that they use -- to use scratch paper, make double-sided copies, use electronic communication, and send 'stop junk mail' coupons.

We've done a lot of waste reduction programs with the print shop -- the people there have been great. We created a recycled paper policy that's going to be implemented this summer that says we have to use paper that is unbleached and to use tree-free alternatives when they are available.

I think that going tree-free is really, really important. We're constantly researching tree-free alternatives -- like hemp, kenaf, bamboo -- and have a lot of support in the university to do that. The students are incredibly involved. There's a tremendous amount of opportunities for students to get involved on all different levels and students create a lot of this stuff. The demand for tree-free paper was really the students, hammering at the printing shop and the Survival Center.

The beautiful thing about recycling is that it's a cooperatively funded effort at the university. It's funded jointly by the administration, student government and housing. The recycling program, like other environmental issues, also builds community. Everybody kicks in and everybody's responsible, we all work together to make a difference.

Garbage is something we all have in common. We all produce garbage. I feel that recycling is the foot in the door to all the other environmental issues. It gets people to recognize that there are alternatives. People are thinking beyond that garbage can.

What I do is, I facilitate. I bring the educational portion to it. We provide the opportunity for people to recycle. We really try to promote the fact that people are making a difference and then we set up things in place -- like with the printing department -- so that waste reduction and alternative resources are the way of life. And that the [other] choice is waste.

Right now we're at a 43% recovery and we've also reduced our waste 15% over the last 2 years. Ideally, I'd like to recover 100% -- zero waste. We need to have more market development, with laws that create market development and mandate that companies produce things that are made from recycled materials.

There needs to be more corporate responsibility for the trash. For example, a company sells their product to us, and charges a price for it and then gets the profit; but we have to haul the trash. At our university alone, it costs a million dollars to dispose of waste annually. And where does that waste come from? Everywhere else but here. So, I really want to create vendor contracts that require the vendor to take their waste back. And most of that waste is paper.

Paper is totally abused. And it shouldn't be. Every time we use a piece of paper, we should just imagine holding a tree.

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