UTA adds 35 Pepsi recycling bins in effort to promote sustainability

This week and next week new Pepsi bottle recycling bins will be placed around the university. Plastic and aluminum can be recycled in the bins.

The Office of Sustainability received 35 Pepsi bottle recycling bins and placed nine in the Maverick Parking Garage to promote the university’s going green efforts, and that’s only the start.

This week and next, the office will be placing more bins to recycle plastic and aluminum at university residence halls, apartments and the University Center after getting confirmation.

Apartment Life director Molly Albart confirmed nine bins, which will be placed in university apartments. The bins will be placed near pool and mail areas.

“By adding additional recycling bins in our apartment communities, we hope to make recycling more convenient for our residents, which will hopefully increase the amount of recycling in our communities,” Albart said in an e-mail.

Recycling coordinator Becky Valentich said that the recycling bins will bring more awareness to the university with a more visible presence.

She said the bins are part of Pepsi’s contract with the university. Pepsi also gave the university another 35 bins at the start of this semester.

Rusty Franklyn, Maverick Parking Garage manager, said she supports the efforts being made to reduce waste.

One recycling container is kept on each floor next to the elevator. There is also one on each landing in the northeast stairwell and one at the bottom of the southwest stairwell, so users can throw their recyclables in there rather than in garbage cans.

“I am interested in doing our part to green the university,” Franklyn said. “I am much more interested on a global scale. Whatever we can do to leave our children and grandchildren a world where there are still trees, plants, flowers and the ability to live above ground and not beneath domes, we should be doing.”

Franklyn said she was inspired to add the bins during Earth Day.

“When Earth Day came around and I was looking for a way that the Maverick Parking Garage could contribute, I decided that asking the university to place recycling bins here would be a good place to start,” she said.

Valentich said the office is waiting for a response from Residence Life before adding bins to the residence halls.

Nursing freshman Brianda Diaz de Leon said she has recycling bins in her room and recycles materials.

“If I am studying in the study lounge of Brazos House and there are recycling bins, I can recycle papers and cans there,” she said. “I don’t have to go far. I think a lot more people will recycle. Many of us are lazy, but if we have recycling bins close by we will go ahead and recycle.”

Political science freshman Mark Priebe said getting more recycling bins in Arlington Hall will be very cool.

“There will be more incentive to recycle,” he said. “It reduces waste that would go otherwise to landfills. Recycled products can be reused by companies instead of creating new ones. I do recycling because it is not hard to do. Society as a whole saves money by recycling.”