This is a tough but interesting subject-thanks for bringing it up.  The thing about deskside collection of anything is that somehow there is a sense of entitlement from folks on campuses, especially faculty members, that the custodians handle the deskside trash.  At the University of Oregon, recycling is voluntary and thus (unbelievable that we exist with this), people who recycle at their desks have to empty recycling to central sites in the departments.  As well, forever, the custodians emptied every deskside trash can nightly-like 5000 trash cans/nite. 
 

I have always advocated for folks to have to haul their trash as well as recycling.  Then someone brought up an interesting comment-if trash is collected deskside, then people will throw recyclables in the deskside trash and vice versa-if you pick up recyclables deskside then people will also throw all their trash in the recycle bin-whatever is easiest.  With that in mind, what is the best route on this?  The University of Vermont has the mini-bin system, which is great!  Though, it would be impossible politically to do, I think that people should still centralize their own recyclables (helps people get in tune with their consumption and trash) and that custodians only service deskside once/week and will not pick up any cans that have paper or bottles/cans in their trash bin.  That would be awesome.

I think that eliminating deskside collection of anything is a great budget idea but unless there is a campus policy AND the upper administration supports this, it is difficult as deskside trash collection is a sacred cow so to speak.  In reality, the upper administration really needs to come forth with this and take the opportunity to use the budget issues as a way to boost recycling and get folks to empty their own recycling and trash.  But if that happens then there's a chance that some folks will either throw everything in the trash or into the recycling (thus contaminating it).  So, ideally having the custodians not pick up trash cans that have recyclables in it, seem to be the best thing to yield the biggest return and waste recovery.

Very interesting topic.  Thanks!

Karyn Kaplan

University of Oregon

 Custodian Roles                                             

Our offices have a small trash container (with liner) and a small recyclables container (no liner -- so toss the tuna sandwich in there and you may have to live with the results).  Custodial staff pick up both, and will "correct" the obvious mistakes (a bottle in the trash).  But they also can note repeat offenders, and notify the supervisor.  My sense is that compliance is high, mistakes are easily corrected, and office workers are happy with the system.

My expectation would be that our system would perform better than making office workers haul trash.  Consider a simple mistake (dumped my trash into the recycling bin) repeated many times a day in many places.  The office worker is far less likely than a custodian to correct such a mistake.  The custodian picking up a large barrel of waste or recyclables is unlikely to see a problem until they empty into a dumpster.  So now a problem that was solvable on the small office scale has blown up to dumpster scale. 

Mike Lizotte, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh