Recycle Bins at the Lodbell Dining Hall

Personal experience

As an international graduate student, I was familiar with the concept of single stream recycling when I arrived here at MIT. I do not have any problem about how to seperate the trash and put it in separate bins.

To me, the problem is having regular (non-recycling) trash bins in different corneres of the dining hall. I cannot deny that I sometimes get tempted to throw everything in those trash bins and leave, specially when I am in a hurry. I think if we believe in the concept of recycling, we should motivate people by removing the regular trash bins from the Lodbell dining hall. I have included pictures of these bins below. The two ones that are close to the exit door are very convinient for someone who is exiting the dining hall and it's highly likely that he/she throw the whole trash in them.

Experiences of others

In order to see what other people think about these recycle bins, I have interviewed a few people with different backgrounds. Below is what each person thinks about the recycle bins at the Lodbell dining hall.

Irmgard Bischofberger, Assistant Professor, MIT

As a person who grew up in Switzerland, where we do multiple stream recycling, single stream recycling here in the States is very easy for me. Whenever, I eat at the student center I know where each part of my trash should go and I separate them easily and correctly without any need to pay attention to the instructions. I would say for most of Europeans this is kind of second natural as we all grow up with the culture of recycling. I know that the slots of the bins have different shapes and sizes in order to help people to separate their trash. However, for people who know about recycling, this might be frustrating as it becomes harder to throw the trash into the bin from a relatively further distance.

Elan Pavlov, CEO of Curiositate Inc., MIT Alumni

Coming to MIT as an international student from Israel, I didn’t know much about recycling and didn’t care about in which bin I throw my trash. I learnt about the process over the years that I spent here. I suspect many foreigners share this issue with me. To be honest I still get confused when I have a paper plate with food soaked in. I think the most important thing is education for foreigners and by foreigners I mean tourists and visitors but more importantly international students. I think to make these bins efficient, a foreigner with a completely different cultural background and not knowing English should be able to use them.

Ashley Kaiser, First Year Graduate Student, MIT

I find that the recycling bins in the student center are very helpful to ensure that trash, compost, and recycling are separated into the proper areas. I like that these bins are designed to look clean and modern, as they are more aesthetically pleasing than standard trash receptacles. Their colored-coding also makes them extremely easy to use when I am passing by quickly to throw out trash, as I can easily tell where my trash, recycling, and compost should go. In particular, I like how these bins show explicit lists and images of what types of waste should go in each bin, and I think that the images are the most helpful as a quick reference.

Mohammad Islam, Third Year Graduate Student, MIT

I like the system of having trash, recycling and compost bins side by side at the Student Center, which makes it more convenient to separate things easily. However, I do see some issues with the bins. One issue with the bins is that the images and information telling you where to put trash vs. recycling is not very large. It can be difficult to read these signs, so if you are not sure where something should go and don't have the time to read through the signs, it'll most likely go in the trash. Another issue is that the size of the holes in each of the bins isn't necessarily reflective of what items should go in the bins. I would prefer each bin to have similarly sized holes. Having such a small entry for recyclables can make it difficult to stick objects into recycling. Lastly, having signs for specific student center items (such as specific containers used by vendors there) telling people where these containers should be put will encourage people to recycle when appropriate. I believe many people throw containers in trash when they are unsure if they are recyclable.