A History of Recycling at Yale

Yale’s University’s recycling efforts began simultaneously with the first Earth Day in 1970.  Christiane Citroen, a member of the first graduating class of female undergraduates, launched a grassroots effort to collect paper from around campus. 

The students’ grassroots work was concentrated and converted into an official  undergraduate organization in 1980, in association with Yale’s Office of Energy and Conservation.  Although officially a “volunteer” organization, Yale Recycling was privileged to have funding to pay its workers. Yale’s Administration also gave Yale Recycling “avoided tipping fees” (i.e. the costs that the University would have paid to dump its used paper as trash).  Income also came from the Marcus Paper Company for sale of newspaper, white ledger and—as the computer age advanced—continuous-feed print-out paper from dot matrix printers.

Yale Recycling assumed a leadership position during the garbage crisis of the late 1980s, when the tipping fee to dump a ton of trash at the local landfill skyrocketed from 18 to as high as 98 dollars. Connecticut passed a recycling law in 1987, scheduled to come into effect in 2001.  As a result of these changes, Yale Facilities’ staff summoned members of Yale Recycling to a meeting in 1988 to determine whether or not Yale could comply with the state recycling law. Yale Recycling member and a master’s student at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, CJ May (MEM ’89) addressed these questions as the basis for his master’s project.  He compiled data on Yale’s trash and recycling efforts, quantities of paper purchased, and recycling efforts locally and nationally.  His conclusion found that Yale Recycling’s status as a student organization was not sufficient for the tasks it would need to oversee to service the campus. Equipped with one rack truck and student workers who juggled recycling runs between classes, the organization was already “maxed out” at 200 tons of paper per year. Analysis of purchasing records revealed that this effort was insufficient to recover even the copy paper purchased centrally, let alone the newspapers, cans, bottles and other mandated items.  To comply with the law, Yale would have to rely on full-time staffers.

In February 1990 May was hired as Yale’s first Recycling Coordinator, a position he still holds.  He has worked both with student members of Yale Recycling as well as Facilities staffers to kick off the Connecticut-mandated program. Yale Recycling has since transitioned from an undergraduate student organization to a department under the umbrella organization of Yale Facilities.  Student workers still play an enormous role in Yale Recycling. They oversee delivery of bins, large clean-out operations for offices, special events recycling, outreach and education, and the collection of unwanted clothing, furniture and other room furnishings at the end of the school year.

Yale now recycles all paper products, including even hard cover books, which it recycles as mixed paper.  Plastic bottles are also recycled, along with glass and metal food and beverage containers.  Most noteworthy is the role of Yale Recycling’s dedicated student workers, who strive to keep Yale on the cutting edge.  Yalies today have preserved the mentality of the University’s environmentally conscious alumni, first recycling computers in the mid 1990s in response to student requests, and partnering with Yale engineering and chemistry students at the turn of this century to pilot a collection and processing program using Yale’s own dining hall grease for bio-diesel.  Students have also piloted food waste collection from a number of events in recent years.

Student Workers, summer 2004