What's on this page?

• Recycling Paper: Don't believe a blue bin
• Shredding
• Getting Bins Emptied

Recycling Paper: Don't believe a blue bin

If you have a standard blue recycling container, it may tell you a number of things you can't (or shouldn't) recycle. Don't believe it!

• White paper only? Nope--any color is fine.
• No newspapers? Newsprint is just dandy.
• No magazines? The more the merrier.
• No glossy paper? On the contrary, it's terrific, because it weighs a great deal for its volume. Recycle those outdated Office Depot catalogs now!

Here's what you can recycle in the blue recycling bins (despite what they may have written on them):

• Any color paper.
• Newspapers.
• Magazines, catalogues, and other glossy paper.
• Telephone books. Again, they're so heavy for their size, feel free to bring in your old ones from home!
• NCR (no carbon required) forms.
• Paper sacks, as long as there is no food residue in them.

• Staples.
• Paperclips.
• Post-it notes.
• Envelopes.

• No thermal or carbon paper--although both are rare in these days of plain-paper fax machines and NCR forms.
• No cardboard boxes. Cardboard has a separate recycling process: please use it.
• No aluminum cans: this is paper recycling. (Some people misunderstand and treat the blue bins as general recycling containers. They aren't.)
• Nothing with food residue on it: no hamburger wrappers, greasy napkins, or french fry containers, please!
• No office supplies:
  • File folders, file jackets, hanging files
  • Please put them in your copy room or other agreed-upon spot for others to re-use if you are finished with them.
  • If they are beyond redemption, remove any metal (e.g., the rods in hanging files) and put them with cardboard, please.
  • Binder clips
  • Again, recycle them through your copy room or other agreed spot.
  • If they are beyond re-use, they need to go in the trash.
  • 3-ring binders
  • Your copy room or other agreed spot can serve as a recycling depot for office supplies.
  • Those with tight budgets may not mind the printing on the binder or the need to straighten a prong.
• No plastic:
  • Transparencies
  • Slides
  • Sheet protectors

Shredding

Although confidentiality requirements, such as HIPAA, require some things to be shredded, please don't shred what you do not have to.

Shredded paper is extremely bulky for its weight. That makes it difficult for the University to efficiently move and store it, and it makes it very expensive for the recycling company to pick it up and transport it. Envision how much a truck-load made up of bags of shredded paper might weigh. Now envision the same truck loaded with telephone books. Get the difference? The more paper weight by volume, the more practical it is to recycle it.

The University's Privacy Officer and HIPAA Compliance Coordinator, Christina F. Solis, J.D., is putting together a working group to address two relevant issues:

1. Can shredded materials be re-used, e.g. for packing materials?
   (The answer right now looks like "no", because most people use shredders that generate strips of paper--which can potentially be re-assembled.)
2. Can we reduce the amount of material being shredded?

Getting Bins Emptied

It's really quite simple--when a blue paper recycling bin is full, empty it into one of the large blue barrels.

When the blue barrel is full, call the FIXT line (x3498). It will be emptied within 24 hours, usually the same afternoon.

Please do not stack cardboard on a paper recycling barrel. Feel free to stack cardboard next to a barrel, but not on it. The two recyclables (cardboard and paper) have different storerooms, so they need to be handled separately.