Purdue News

Purdue recycling efforts generate revenue, topsoil

By recycling corrugated cardboard and office paper, Purdue Recycling generated $32,805 in the last fiscal year, said Chris Nolte, refuse and recycling coordinator at Purdue. Bales of cardboard cartons are sold to a recycling processor in Indianapolis and used to make new corrugated cardboard cartons. The money will be put back into the recycling program.

Nolte said more revenue now is being generated by baling cartons from academic and administrative buildings, food service areas such as Stone Hall and Purdue Memorial Union, and all residence halls.

Purdue also saved $21,875 in tipping fees at the Waste Management transfer station in Lafayette by recycling the cardboard and paper rather than throwing it away.

Purdue Recycling and the university's Utilities Department began an experiment last fall called the "Soilermaker" project, which mixed yard waste (leaves and wood chips) with coal ash from the Wade Power Plant and nontoxic byproduct sludge from Eli Lilly's Tippecanoe and Clinton Laboratories. The finished product, after composting for three months, was about 175 cubic yards of soil conditioner, which can be used as a substitute for topsoil in campus landscaping projects.

"We've had to go farther and farther away from campus to get topsoil from university fields, but as the Soilermaker project progresses again this fall, we should reduce the amount of topsoil we need from those fields," Nolte said.

Other recycling efforts at Purdue, from July 1, 1995, to June 30 of this year, include:

• Paper recycling: 748.93 tons of office paper, newspapers, printing plant scrap paper, hardbound books, magazines, telephone directories and corrugated cardboard were sent off campus for reuse and sale. The materials were sent to paper mills in the Midwest to make products such as paperboard, toweling, tissue and corrugated cardboard cartons.

• Metals recycling: Approximately 509 tons of recyclable metals were sold off-campus, including about 3.5 tons of aluminum and bimetal beverage cans recycled by residence halls and other student organizations.

• Transportation Services recycling: The university's transportation maintenance facility recycled 4,755 gallons of used motor oil and other vehicle fluids, and sent 330 worn or damaged vehicle tires off campus for retreading and resale.

• Hilltop Apartments recycling: In early 1996, Purdue Recycling began handling recyclable metal beverage cans and steel food cans, clear glass bottles and plastic bottles from a new four-bin collection trailer in the Hilltop Apartments complex. Crews hauled about three tons of recyclables to the Waste Management transfer station in Lafayette, with the metals going to Oscar Winski Co. Inc., Lafayette. Nolte said that by next spring, five more trailers should be in place for use by residence halls.

• Aggregate recycling: Purdue ground up an estimated 15,000 tons of discarded concrete from demolition projects this summer, and is reusing the gravel on university parking lots and landscaping and drainage projects.

• Composting: Purdue received 28,800 cubic yards of leaves at the joint Purdue-Lafayette-West Lafayette composting operation in the fall of 1995. The previous year's leaves, reduced to rich compost, were either hauled away by city trucks for public use, spread on the university's Married Student Courts gardens or mixed with animal manure and straw bedding and spread on university farm fields as soil conditioner.

• Resale/Reusable items: Purdue recycled 146 tons of surplus items such as furniture, bedding and office equipment through its Salvage Store. Among those items was a three-section temporary building used during the Lynn Hall construction project.

  CONTACT: Nolte, (317) 494-0194.

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